


In Repair

by Guede



Series: The Shop [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Fingering, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Chastity Device, Cock Warming, Collars, Dom/sub Undertones, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, Duct Tape, Grief/Mourning, Impact Play, Intercrural Sex, M/M, Motorcycles, Nipple Torture, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Overstimulation, Prostate Milking, Sensory Deprivation, Sex Toys, Shaving, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-26
Packaged: 2018-07-18 09:28:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7309492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris demonstrates how not to do a midlife crisis road-trip, and John uses a lot of duct tape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Repair

**Author's Note:**

> This isn't the darkest kind of fic out there, but it's pretty heavy on the amorality and problematic relationships. Last warning.

After Allison gets married, Chris goes on a road trip. 

He doesn’t really plan it that way. Actually, he didn’t have any plans whatsoever: he’d scheduled a lot of big commissions to go through in the months leading up to the wedding, to make sure he’d have enough cash on hand—he and the McCalls have made peace, but he damn well was paying for half—and didn’t really look past that, thinking he’d just sit down and catch his breath while the newlyweds were off on their honeymoon. Except that then he went home and took off his suit, and looked at his empty house, and he just…couldn’t.

Scott and Allison are taking nearly a month and a half off, and Scott had asked if he could leave his motorcycle with Chris while they were gone. He’d even asked whether Chris would mind taking it out on the road every so often, keep the oil moving. So…yeah, Chris figures why not.

He packs a few changes of clothes, digs his old helmet out of the attic, and then gets on and just gets on the nearest highway. If he has to make a decision about which way to turn, he goes with the way that looks the least busy, and that’s how he ends up somewhere in the middle of northern California with a broken bike and no cell-phone reception, trudging down a mostly-dirt road on a hot, sunny day.

The bike at least didn’t throw him. He just stopped for lunch by a stream that looked pretty and cool, and then when he got back on it, it wouldn’t start. He’s hoping it’s just overheating, but he doesn’t even have the tools to check that and he’s cursing himself a little bit for that; Scott left a kit too but Chris hadn’t brought it, had some dumb idea that he wasn’t actually going to go that far before he got sick of it and he could always just find a repair shop where he lives.

Anyway, he knows from the last sign he passed that there is a town within the next ten miles, so he won’t have to sleep out in the open. He’s hoping he might actually pass something sooner, but as the sun climbs higher and the handlebars get slipperier and slipperier with sweat, nothing turns up. The few buildings he passes all are beaten and weathered, clear derelicts.

It’s humid as a teapot in hell, too. He doesn’t give a damn about looking impressive so he’s got sensible long sleeves and jeans on, and in this weather they weigh like plate armor and feel like scratchy, increasingly slimy burlap, all the sweat soaking up into them and then staying put instead of evaporating. He has enough water that he’s not worried about dehydration, but he’s just about to take a break out of sheer disgust at how grimy he feels when the hill he’s on crests and he finds himself looking down at a man standing in front of a barn.

The barn isn’t pretty but the roof doesn’t have any holes in it, and the house half-hidden behind it has actual power lines running down to it. There’s a jeep parked in front of the barn, and what looks like another car parked inside of it, and the man’s working on the engine of a third one that’s backed under one of the few shade trees in the area.

He’s got his back to Chris, and bends over to tinker under the car hood as Chris starts down the hill. Chris doesn’t want to startle him so he just keeps walking up at the same speed. He’s blowing his breath like a dying racehorse anyway and the man has to hear him sooner or later.

Sure enough, the man turns around, shading his eyes with his hand, as Chris passes the hundred-yard mark. He’s blond, maybe taller than Chris, with a broader build. A couple more yards and he lowers his hand and Chris notes with a little surprise that they’re probably around the same age.

The man comes up to the split-rail fence around his property, wiping his hands with a rag. He doesn’t say anything till they’re close enough that he doesn’t have to raise his voice, and then he nods at the bike. “Overheat?”

“Maybe—probably, I don’t have the tools to check,” Chris says.

The man nods and glances over his shoulder, Chris assumes for family, but then he half-turns and pitches the rag into a bucket. Then he turns back. “Well, bring it in. I should get lunch anyway.”

Chris doesn’t hesitate. Just keeps on walking, curving the bike around to angle towards the gate that the man opens for him. He’s not exactly that quick to trust, knows better than to just buy the idea that rural means safe and hospitable, but he doesn’t really think about it. He’s probably not thinking about it on purpose.

“Park it over there for now,” the man says, pointing. He picks around the yard, grabbing a nearly-empty water bottle, a wrench, a phone, and once Chris has the bike in place, the man waves him into the barn. “John.”

“Chris,” Chris says, walking first into the barn, like any idiot who’s watched a horror movie knows is a bad idea.

The whole trip is a pretty bad idea, he thinks absently, looking around. The barn looks a lot less dingy on the inside, and it has an A/C that stops Chris in his tracks, a gasp startling from him as the icy air sweeps over and for a moment almost makes him feel clean.

“You walking for a while?” John says. He comes around Chris and then heads towards the back.

Most of the animal stalls have been knocked out to make room for the car restoration shop that the man seems to be running, but there’s still a big box stall at the other end, with the half-door still intact. John opens it and goes in, and when Chris follows, he finds himself standing in a little living room.

Not a bachelor pad, he thinks. He doesn’t see a ring on John’s hand, but the TV pushed up against the wall isn’t an oversize, high-tech wonder. It just looks like it got picked up at some superstore’s Black Friday sale, and the only piece of furniture, a saggy armchair, matches with how it’s worn but kept neat and stainless. Couple DVD cases scattered around, a lone car magazine atop the minifridge in the corner along with a pair of half-melted red candles and an old-fashioned metal flashlight.

“About a half-hour,” Chris says, looking at the clock on the wall. That’s the only thing that doesn’t really fit: it’s one of those slick digital frames that syncs up to the Internet, with a scrolling sidebar of online headlines like _Florida Man Pulls Gator From Garbage Compactor_.

“That’s my son’s last birthday present to me,” John says, coming up with a grimace and a chilled bottle of water. “He’s a little…well, I love him.”

Chris smiles, both in thanks and in sympathy, and takes the bottle. It’s so cold he nearly drops it, and then he can’t resist the urge to press it against the side of his face. He can’t help sighing either, and when he finally lowers the bottle, he realizes he’d closed his eyes for it, too.

Because he opens them and catches John looking right at him. Chris stares back, hand still where he’d been about to twist off the cap.

John’s expression doesn’t change. He’s standing there, looking at Chris, loose stance, and finally Chris looks down, opens up the bottle. Juggles the cap in his hand, then shrugs and puts the bottle to his mouth and tips it up. Catches a glance at John while he’s doing that and the man is still looking, doesn’t seem to have moved at all.

Chris takes the bottle down a little too fast. Some water dribbles out of the corner of his mouth, making him feel like some gangling teenager again, and he swears under his breath as he wipes at it with the back of his hand. Then he jerks his head up, feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle as John turns and walks away.

“Where were you coming from?” John asks. He leans up and rummages in some cabinets bolted to the wall. He’s in jeans and a grungy, damp t-shirt that maybe started out life as white but now is nearly the same color as his tanned skin.

The cotton stretches over his back, sticking to the small of it and then slicking over his shoulderblades, and for a second Chris presses his tongue against his top teeth. The little spark of pain that results doesn’t do much to clear his head, and he just tells John where he started. “Been on the road a few…well, almost a week now,” he says, when John looks sharply over his shoulder.

“Yeah, you’d have to be,” John mutters. He pulls out a few things from the cabinet, then tosses one of them to Chris: a little plastic-wrapped, pre-moistened towel, like you get in the nicer Japanese restaurants. “Road-tripping?”

“I guess,” Chris says. He peels open the towel package and looks at it, and thinks about the way John’s shirt looks like an extra layer of skin, about how it might look peeling back and then takes the towel and rubs it harshly over his face and the back of his neck. “Been a long time since I got to do something like this.”

“Kids out of the house?” John asks.

A lot of people ask that. Chris nods, and then John doesn’t ask where Chris’ wife is. He just shuts the cabinet and then comes back over. Stands probably an inch too close, giving Chris that calm, steady look again as Chris takes another swig of the water.

“I don’t really know where I’m going,” Chris suddenly finds himself saying. “My daughter just got married, she’s not due back for another five weeks. I just figured I’d see how far I got.”

One of John’s brows ticks up. “Nobody expecting you?”

That is a leading question, Chris thinks, and he looks John straight in the eye when he answers. “Can’t expect somebody when you aren’t planning on showing up anywhere.”

“Yeah, guess not,” John says. He shifts. Not all of him, just down by his hands. He’s got a roll of black tape, that plastic rubbery-looking kind electricians use, about two inches wide. “Happy to look at your bike, but even if it’s just overheating, could take a while.”

Chris shrugs. It’s a lot cooler inside the barn, cooler and drier, but somehow his head still feels all under water, slow and a little distorted, like he’s seeing things from just a few inches farther off than they should be. “Well, whatever you want to do, I appreciate it.”

John blinks then. He’s blinked before, obviously, but for some reason that one catches Chris’ attention. And then his mouth curves, a lazy, almost affable smile, and Chris thinks to himself that back in high school the man was probably the star quarterback, every mother’s favorite.

“Take off your shirt,” he says.

Chris has his hand with the bottle up by his mouth, wiping it off again. He finishes that and then adds the used towel to that hand, and puts both down on a table by the door. Then he grabs the bottom of his shirt—he has to scrape the hem some to unstick it from his skin—and pulls it up over his head, then off his arms.

John backs up till he’s standing by a bucket. He nudges that towards Chris with his foot and Chris drops the shirt into the bucket. “Turn around,” John says. “Stand up against the…yeah.”

Chris steps up behind the armchair. His hands briefly touch the top and it’s covered in real leather, he thinks in absentminded surprise; the finish is just so worn it looks fake.

“Arms behind your back,” John says, and before he’s finished Chris has his wrists crossed behind him.

There’s a little second, where John doesn’t do anything and Chris is just standing there and Chris maybe wonders—but then something touches his wrist. Sticks and pulls a little, before John takes his wrist and rolls the tape firmly around it.

John ties him up with a good few loops. Does a leisurely job of it, so the first couple Chris almost doesn’t feel, and then the pressure gradually increases as the layers build up and start winching on each other. When he’s done, there’s a _snick_ sound and Chris starts, realizing the man has a knife—but then a broad, slightly rough palm spreads over the midpoint of his back. It presses down, just like how the tension is pressing out, like Chris is a sponge and his anxiety is water coming out, and then strokes up between his shoulderblades. Holds over his nape for a second, then drops back.

Chris breathes out and John slips two fingers down the back of his waistband, tugs a little, before reaching around and undoing Chris’ fly. He pulls down the zipper and then sticks his fingers into the bottom, pushing apart the rows of metal teeth. Their tips catch under Chris’ cock and he stutters his inhale.

John pulls his hand out. Gives Chris a glancing pat on the side of the hip, then steps back. He’s doing something, his clothes are rustling, and then Chris hears some odd snaps. “You bring any underwear with you?”

That should be an odd question. Chris doesn’t even bother to pretend it bothers him. “Couple pairs, why?”

“Well, there’s a Walmart a couple towns over, I guess you can always grab a pack on your way out,” John says, grabbing either side of Chris’ jeans.

He pushes them down to just past the bottom of Chris’ ass. Chris picked some of the tighter ones for the trip, not wanting to get a leg snagged on the bike, and this pair’s still so stiff with sweat that they actually try to roll back up; John has to tug them a second time. Then he leaves them and cuts through the sides of Chris’ briefs with the knife. Sticks his fingers between Chris’ legs to get the fabric out from under the crotch, pulling that from the back.

His fingers feel odd, too dry and smooth, strangely loose-skinned, and by the time Chris comes up with _latex gloves_ , John is probing between his buttocks.

Chris lets out a long, deep exhale, not quite harsh enough for a groan, but getting there. He bends over, pushing back, and then moves his feet apart so that he can press his belly down against the top of the armchair. The leather sticks and then peels at him as John works in one finger, then another.

“Hell, you’re tight,” John grunts.

“I don’t get out much,” Chris mutters.

John’s fingers slow, and then he makes an amused noise, forcing in three fingers. It’s a little much and Chris sucks his breath between his teeth, squirming into the armchair, trying to relieve the pressure on his hole. John doesn’t even move his hand, just lets the armchair stuffing push Chris back, lets Chris end up rocking himself deeper onto the other man’s fingers. The burn spikes up Chris’ spine and Chris drops his head down the front of the armchair, moaning.

His cock’s getting hard, shoving up into the other side of the armchair. He hitches himself, some half-formed idea about friction coming into his head, and then John pulls out his fingers. Puts his other hand on Chris’ back at the same time, pinning Chris, as something thinner but blunter wedges itself at Chris’ hole.

Some kind of fucking dildo, Chris thinks. The head’s a little wider than the rest of it and he groans as his hole relaxes into the narrower part, and then groans as the thing flares again. John breathes like he’s running at half the speed Chris is, and Chris already feels like he’s pushing through molasses, and then pushes steadily, gets the dildo all the way in. The end of that bulge is a lot narrower, tricking Chris into bearing down hard, thinking he can relax, and he ends up shuddering on top of the armchair, struggling with the—full, he feels full, he didn’t even know he had a space to fill.

John’s stepping back. Taking off the gloves, snapping them like a fancy doctor. Chris twists his head around and sees John dropping them into the same bucket as Chris’ shirt, the bucket with Chris’ cut-up underwear draped over the edge. He wipes his hands against his thighs and Chris can see the gloves had starch or something on them, left white, powdery streaks against his old-gold skin.

Then he comes back. He takes either side of Chris’ jeans and hauls them back up. The denim is uncomfortably damp and seems to stretch less than Chris remembers. It feels like a goddamn vise squeezing his ass, shifting the dildo inside him so that he moans and twists his fingers against each other. For a second it’s crushing his erection, too, but then John pulls him off the armchair, holding him up by the arm, and digs his cock and balls out so they hang through his open fly.

“Knees,” John says.

Chris kneels. He looks up and John looks down. Little trickle of sweat by his temple but otherwise John’s just got that calm, unflinching look as he undoes the front of his jeans, pulls out his cock, slides it into Chris’ mouth.

It’s been a while for this too, and Chris is sloppy and slow, trying to remember what to do, where his lips and tongue and teeth go. John’s staring at him the whole time, just with a hand on the side of Chris’ jaw, and then John pulls himself up a little bit, gaze rising as his hand slides under Chris’ chin, grips that. Pulls Chris forward and just does it himself, so all Chris needs to give him is wet and heat.

When he comes, he doesn’t pull out. He uses his thumb to wipe at the come that squeezes out between his cock and the corners of Chris’ mouth, rubbing it over Chris’ lip till somehow it goes back in. Chris chokes a little, coughs a little, swallows as hard and deep as he can, his own cock a vicious, throbbing ache hanging between his knees.

“Get up,” John says, finally taking his cock out of Chris’ mouth. He gives Chris’ chin an upchuck, and then reaches down to hook his hand under Chris’ arm. Just gives that a jerk before stepping back, letting Chris get up on his own while the man tidies up his clothes. “Get on the armchair.”

There’s a strange tug at the back of Chris’ jeans, pulling at his waistband and he’d think it’s a disembodied finger, except that at the same time the dildo twists inside of him like a bolt of lightning, nearly taking out his knees.

John reaches behind him and grabs something, and the pressure on his waistband lets up. He turns around, sees something snaking through the air, and then understands it’s a plastic cord, snaking out of his hole and across to a remote in John’s hand. Chris takes a step towards the armchair and the cord pulls straight, moving the—not a dildo, the vibrator, and he stumbles. His knee bangs into the side of the armchair and then he catches himself by crooking an elbow into the armchair’s top. The tape around his wrists cuts into his skin.

He gets himself by inches into the armchair, shuffling around to the front and then trying to slide down hip-first, only to lose his balance and land square on his ass. The impact jolts up through him, liquid sparks striking off where the vibrator presses and prods at him, and he shudders so hard and so long that John gives up and tugs him the rest of the way into place. Sitting proper in the armchair, till John puts up the footrest and then Chris has to sprawl back on his arms.

Chris is panting now, all that water he drank vaporized, the A/C nowhere near enough to keep up with the heat mounting in him. He’s sweating and it’s melting the tape’s sticky side so he can twist his wrists, though the tape’s still wrapped so tight that there’s no way he’s getting out of it short of a sharp edge. He lies back and stares as John sets the vibrator remote on one of the arms and then pulls out the tape roll and the knife.

John tapes the remote in place and then moves down to the footrest. He taps Chris’ boot with the knife. “Army?”

“Not me, just them,” Chris manages to say, in between gasps. “Surplus.”

“Yeah, well, they’re good ones. Don’t see that much now,” John says, as he picks at the laces. He unknots them and then pulls them slack from the holes so he can slide the boots off, and then he takes Chris’ ankles, one at a time, and winds tape around them and around the steel struts of the footrest.

Chris ends up with most of his weight bearing down on his ass, his knees bent up and his legs spread to either side of the footrest so that he can shift back onto his shoulders for only a few seconds at a time. He tries it twice before he gives up and makes himself settle onto his ass. It’s hard—the vibrator sinks directly against his prostate, turning his thighs to water—but he tells himself he’s not moving. He’s not—he’s really not going anywhere.

He’s moaning constantly now. His weight is set but he can’t help rolling his hips from side to side, trying to at least change where the vibrator presses, if he can’t get away from how hard, and the movement’s making his dick smack into his groin, shifting the tiny cutting teeth of the zipper into the sides of his erection and the backs of his balls. And then there’s plastic against his lips.

“Finish up the bottle,” John says when Chris flicks his eyes over.

He tips the bottle as Chris drinks, won’t take it away till it’s empty. Then he wipes at Chris’ mouth over and over, till Chris thinks he must want something, and tries to lick his fingers. John snorts and pulls them away, and then comes down with a piece of tape.

Two of them—three, the last one going around the back of Chris’ head to keep the tape on since he’s sweating so much. John rubs his thumb over the end, then lets it run off onto Chris’ jawline as he leans—past Chris. He’s got another remote.

He turns on the TV. It’s something with construction. John shakes his head and flips channels till he finds an old black and white movie, and then he moves away. There’s a clatter, he comes back and presses at the vibrator remote, and then walks off, trailing one hand so that it goes along the side of Chris’ face and then back through Chris’ hair as Chris shudders.

“Gonna check out your bike, could be an hour, couple hours,” he says.

* * *

Chris has no fucking idea what the movie is. He knows he watches the whole thing, because the vibrator’s set on some kind of cycle that drills him every time he even starts to space out, but if you asked him what the plot was or even what genre, he wouldn’t be able to tell you.

He’s tied up in the middle of nowhere, nobody knows where he is, and so hard that there are times he thinks he’s died and his cock’s the only thing that’s still alive. It’s the only part of him that seems to have any heat in it, any blood, any energy. The rest of him’s long since collapsed into a haphazard collection of sensation. The on-off pulse of the vibrator, the unstrung feel of his ass around it, muscles past burning but still twitching too much to go numb. The way the leather of the armchair sticks to him, then peels off with a sting that’s slow to build but fiery as hell once it peaks. The random slice of a cramp in his arm or leg or back as some muscle briefly resists.

When John comes back, it’s kind of like a daydream. Chris just looks up and the man is there, hand reaching out to brush across Chris’ cheek. Moaning, Chris turns into it and something slides off his mouth—the tape gag, just dropping to hang around his neck, slicked right off by his sweat.

John’s grinning at him. That’s like a dream too, the way the man grins, knowing and disbelieving at the same time. “Jesus Christ,” he says.

His finger slips into Chris’ mouth, or maybe Chris sucks it in, but either way, it gets there and Chris nurses it, whining, mindless and overwhelmed. John lets him, doing something—turning off the vibrator. Suddenly Chris’ ass is still and he thinks for one dizzying moment that maybe the goddamn vibrator was the only thing holding it together. Because it’s got that freefall feel to it, pulling him up tight all over and then he thinks it’s going to let go, his ass is going to split apart and—

He looks down at John’s head. It’s covering his groin and that’s what registers at first. And then a _wall_ hits him, concrete and fire, and Chris snaps his head back and feels the air bloody his throat as it rushes out of him in a voiceless scream.

Chris is about as out of it after that as he was during the damn movie. He doesn’t think he actually passes out, but he doesn’t understand what’s going on.

When he finally comes back to himself, he’s somewhere else. Still in the barn, same rafters overhead, but the floor is concrete, not carpet, and there’s a drain near his head and water running over him. A bathroom—a shower.

“Jesus,” he mutters, moving his arms. He’s unbound too.

“Yeah, wait a second,” John says.

Chris looks over. There’s no divider between the shower and the rest of the bathroom, and he’s against one wall under the head while John is at the other, naked except for a towel wrapped around his waist, hair slicked down, messing around at the sink and medicine cabinet.

“You bit me,” he says, turning to show his bandaged finger.

“Oh,” Chris says. He tentatively pushes at his arms, and manages to lift his head off the floor, and then to rub at his side. He feels clean, actually. “Yeah. Did I?”

John laughs. Not mocking, friendly. He closes the medicine cabinet and then comes back over, snagging a towel as he goes, and then squats down to start tucking the towel around Chris’ shoulders. When Chris tries to sit up, John gives him a hand and then holds onto him as he hisses and futilely rocks his ass against the concrete, trying to bear down against the sudden, shocking ache. 

“Got you everywhere but there,” John says. He pauses, looking odd, and Chris finally identifies the expression as hesitant. “Probably should, if you don’t mind. I got a little caught up in your bike, left you longer than I was planning.”

Chris shrugs, and then pulls at John’s arm. That seems to be enough for the other man, who hauls Chris a few more inches up, then leans Chris against his shoulder. The water’s just hitting Chris below the waist that way. “What’s wrong with it?” Chris asks.

John reaches over and adjusts Chris’ thigh, and then picks up something from the floor—a tube of lubricant. His arm moves behind Chris and then Chris feels fingers spreading his buttocks. Chris can’t help a hiss, but his body is sinking into it, preferring the way the ache shifts from deeper in him towards the rim of his hole.

“Well, it was overheated, but your oil was low too, and a couple parts look like they were grinding,” John says. He holds Chris’ hole open for the water for nearly a minute before he slides in just one finger. “I think I might have replacements around here somewhere, but if not, it’ll be at least a few days to order them.”

“You get mail that often out here?” Chris mutters. He breathes in slowly, as slowly as John is moving that finger around in him. He can tell John’s not trying to fuck with him but his nerves are still so jumpy that he’s digging his fingers into John’s shoulder. He’s…probably not going to get hard again. But his goddamn cock seems to wish it could, making Chris shiver so his teeth almost chatter.

“Don’t tell me you’re city-bred,” John says, amusement rumbling in his voice.

“Well, this is far out,” Chris says. “And I’m not, so yeah, I know how much somewhere like this has and hasn’t caught up.”

John pulls his finger out. He sits for a second, and then starts easing Chris up. Chris thinks the man is getting ahead of things but miraculously, Chris’ legs hold. Wobbly as hell, and he’s weaving like a drunk as John helps him out of the bathroom, but he manages.

“Okay, fine, smart mouth. I get special treatment,” John says. He props Chris against the wall and then turns around. They’re in a little alley behind a half-wall that shields the washer and dryer from the rest of the barn, and John opens up the dryer and fishes out a wad of dark fabric that he passes to Chris. “I’m a regular enough customer, my supplier’s willing to do a run just for me. But it’s still a few days.”

Chris shakes out the garment one-handed and finds he’s got a pair of drawstring pants. He gets them on, wincing every time his ass muscles pull. “Okay.”

“Okay?” John echoes, a little tightly. 

He gives Chris a look and Chris tenses, feels his chin jerk up by itself, a sudden, desperate anger welling up—but then John steps back. John’s eyes narrow but his gaze itself is oddly free of judgment.

“Dinner is either chicken I have to cook, and I’m only okay, or there’s frozen pizza,” John says.

Chris twists the drawstring around his fingers, then lets it loosen. “Let me see the chicken,” he says. “I might be able to do something.”

John looks at him for another second and Chris thinks—but the other man takes another step away. “This way.”

* * *

The house looks less lived-in than the barn. It’s compact and neat, everything sensibly organized, and John walks around in it like he’s used to maneuvering around another person.

There are framed photos scattered around. Once John sees that Chris does know what he’s doing in a kitchen, John goes back to the barn to close up and Chris looks at some of them in between limping around. He sees the son John mentioned—about the age of Allison and Scott—and an elderly couple he guesses must be John’s parents. One photo shows John in a police uniform, a sheriff’s badge pinned to the front, while another shows John in a dark suit, standing with his arm around his son, who’s in cap and gown. A third shows John and his son and a red-haired girl the son’s age, all of them dressed nice, posed in somebody’s backyard. In that one John’s suit hangs a little lopsided over a gun holster that’s barely visible under his arm, and his son and the girl both are holding bouquets of white lilies; their grip is unusual, positioned like the bouquets are darts they might throw at the camera.

He can’t find any pictures of John’s wife except for one where part of an arm is visible, cradling a baby that must be John’s son. The fingers are too small and slender to be John’s.

By the time John comes back in, Chris has dinner on the table and is already eating. “Sorry, couldn’t wait,” he says.

“Well, you worked for it,” John says dryly. He cuts off a piece of chicken and pops it into his mouth, and then looks up at Chris. “This is good.”

“I work at it,” Chris says, just as dryly.

John laughs. It’s a warm, full laugh, and Chris starts to relax before remembering about his stiff ass. He hitches his weight back onto his hip and John looks over, gaze warm in a different way, before abruptly changing the subject to what Chris does.

They talk like they’re getting to know each other the normal way. Chris talks about his consultancy, moving out of firearms-dealing and into tactical training, feeling better about knowing people wouldn’t use what he was selling for the wrong thing. John volunteers that he used to be in law enforcement and they share some gripes about federal regulation. But John’s retired now, and wouldn’t touch law enforcement with a ten-foot pole for a million dollars. Too burned out, according to him, and Chris leaves it with him.

“The shop’s just a hobby, then?” Chris says.

“It’s not really a shop,” John says, grimacing a little. “I don’t think it counts if I sell something maybe twice in three years.”

Chris can’t help a look around the house. He doesn’t know how much property the man has, but what he can see looks more than comfortable. “That’s all you need?”

“Sell to pay for the hobby.” John taps his fingers against his empty plate. “I don’t think you need that much. It’s funny, how much you think you need, and then things happen and you realize…anyway, I get a good pension.”

He shifts, uncomfortable, and then gets up with his plate. Takes Chris’ plate and silverware, too, and washes up while Chris stands at the edge of the kitchen, cursing himself and trying to think of something to say.

“The guest room’s the second door on the left,” John says, and then he looks up. “I’m the first door, if you need something.”

Chris nods and takes a step away. Then he shifts back. “Look,” he says, and freezes when John looks at him again. He gestures stupidly for a second. “The parts—the bike—”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” John says, turning back to the sink. 

“My chicken isn’t _that_ good,” Chris snaps, suddenly, irrationally irritated.

John glances at him and for some reason the man is amused. It irks Chris more and he’s going to say something about it, and then John lets out that laugh again and things just…dissolve.

“Well, look, let’s just see and settle up when everything’s done,” he says. He plunges a dish into the sink water and suds splash up onto his arms, white tracery outlining the flexing muscles. “And if that sticks in your pride, then just borrow a car. Keys are always tucked in the window shade, driver’s side.”

He finishes with scrubbing and switches to drying. Chris watches for a couple minutes, and then it occurs to him that he’s being—but John doesn’t act like he’s uneasy. Just keeps on with what he’s doing, easy, casual movements, and finally Chris turns and goes down the hall.

The guest room is spare, but that’s fine; it has a bed and that’s all he needs. Chris crawls into bed, thinking maybe he’ll crack a window, it’s a little sticky in the house, and falls asleep before he can.

* * *

In the morning, Chris rolls off the bed feeling—not old and creaking, but he does feel worn. _Loose_ and worn, like he’s still working on pulling everything together again, some puppet with the wires in his joints needing a good twist or two.

He wanders down the hall till he finds the bathroom. Uses the toilet, washes his hands and face. Looks at himself: grown man pulling half-ass stunts like he thinks he’s got an immortality he never believed in when he was a teenager.

Also, he needs a shave. He hesitates, then opens up the cabinet. Lucks out because there’s a pack of cheap plastic one-use razors, and it’s even already open.

Chris is just finishing up when he hears John moving in the hall. He pauses, then dips the razor under the tap to rinse it out. Then he tosses that in the trash and cups his hand in the stream of water. He’s splashing his cheeks in a poor approximation of aftershave when John comes in. He looks up without straightening all the way and in the mirror John’s gaze is moving slowly down his back.

He breathes in just as it hits his ass, and then he puts his hands down on the edge of the sink. “I’d have to borrow your clothes, too,” he says, when it doesn’t look like John is going to say anything.

John sleeps in pretty close to what he wears during the day, with just sweats swapped out for the jeans. His hair’s ruffled up and crushed on one side, but he wears it with a lot more aplomb than Chris, who has to grip the counter to keep from hitching up his pants where they’ve slipped down one hip.

“You don’t want to borrow them. Or the car,” John says bluntly.

Chris sucks in his breath. John walks into the room and stands behind Chris, hands going to Chris’ hips, so close Chris can feel the heat of him through the thin cotton. Close but not touching. Then he leans over till his mouth does touch Chris’ ear. Chris shivers and sucks his breath again, and John waits till he’s done.

“You piss yet?” John mutters. “Take a shit?”

“Yeah.” Chris nods to both.

John leans his head against the back of Chris’ skull. His breath blows down Chris’ nape and spine and Chris can feel a bead of sweat start up at the hairline, then trickle down the same path. His hands squeeze in around Chris’ hips, pushing into the buttocks, and Chris inhales as a twisting, aching heat starts up in his belly.

Then John lets go. Leaves the room. Chris breathes in and out a few times, staring at himself in the mirror, till John comes back. John has the tape roll with him.

This time he binds Chris’ wrists in front of him. He does that standing behind Chris and reaching around; Chris tries to stay pressed into the sink but John’s body keeps grazing at him, sending little shocks into him every time, and finally, when John lets his hands drop, he changes tack. Presses back, back till he can feel how sharply John’s chest rises with a breath. He’s half-surprised that John lets him, but all John does is put a hand to Chris’ waist for a second.

Then John reaches past Chris again to get at the cabinet. He pulls out a roll of gauze and wraps it once around Chris’ eyes. The gauze weave is so open that Chris can see bits of the mirror, but then John goes over it with the tape till all the holes are gone and it’s pitch dark. Pulls the tape tight too, tight enough so that when he’s done and Chris moves his head, Chris has the odd, faintly disorienting sensation that he’s still being gripped by the head.

“Did you jerk off yet?” John says. He sounds too loud, shockingly close. It’s just being blindfolded that’s throwing Chris but Chris jumps and John laughs and runs one palm smoothly up Chris’ back.

“No,” Chris says. He sounds rough. He licks his hips, swallows hard as John tilts him over the sink and then pulls down his pants. “No, didn’t wake up with anything.”

“Yeah?” John says. The cabinet hinges creak. John puts something down on the counter. “What, just when I walked in?”

He grips Chris’ ass with both hands, cupping the buttocks like he’s weighing them, and he’s not wearing gloves and some of his fingers are slick. Chris bites at his lip, then lets that go free as John starts fingering him and he groans. “Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. You didn’t come on in last night.”

“You were hoping I would?” John starts with his thumb. It’s too short to really press into Chris’ prostate, maddeningly short, flirting with the edge so Chris is constantly bracing himself for a lightning storm that won’t come. “Think I was gonna sneak in, crawl in bed with you?”

He takes out his thumb and then drives in two fingers, his longest one hitting directly on point. Chris hitches down, his elbows not locking till late, as that lightning finally starts burning through him. “Wake me up on your goddamn cock,” he hisses. “Could’ve fucking gone to bed like that, if you’d tried. Didn’t even need to talk me into it, could’ve just done it.”

“Jesus, you fucking little smartass _shit_ ,” John growls, corkscrewing his fingers hard.

Chris lets out a jittery cry, swaying from his grip on the counter. He feels more than hears John breathe rough behind him, and thinks he can feel John tensing up too, thinks maybe he pushed too hard, fucked it up, no, not just fucked it up but it’s going to go completely—

John pulls his fingers out, rests his hand on the inside curve of Chris’ buttock for a fraction of a second, almost like he’s steadying himself. Then he pushes something else in. Not the vibrator, but still plastic. Thicker and longer, though with that dip at the end that goads Chris’ ass into clamping it in place inside him. And then John puts his hand over the end, fingers stretched across one buttock, palm on the other, and pushes down and makes it rock as Chris groans.

“You stay long enough, we might do that,” he says. “And keep running your mouth, I might whip your ass too.”

Chris moans like John already has. When John pulls him away from the counter, he stumbles and then falls into the other man and John has to grab him by the waist, half-carry him to wherever they’re going.

The ground under Chris’ feet warms up, goes from carpet and wood to something harder and rougher. Uneven patches, squares, he remembers that the walkway to the barn was made up of concrete blocks, and then the concrete smooths out and the air cools. They’re in the barn.

John stops him and then settles a hand on the back of his neck. He leans into it and John lets him, then pushes him down. Chris starts to go to his knees and John pulls him backwards so he squats, and then he sits down on something that moves. He stiffens, thinking he’ll fall over, and John grabs him by both shoulders. “Just let me,” he says. “Dead weight, you don’t have to do anything.”

“That was the idea,” Chris mumbles.

He’s not sure if John hears him. He half-hopes not, but he’s distracted, trying to figure out what’s going on. He gets pushed down on his back, on some kind of rolling board, and then John pulls his arms over his head. Pats pointedly and Chris holds them out of the way as the _skrcch_ sound of tape echoes through the barn.

It goes around his chest and the board, layers of it for a four-inch stretch on either side of his nipples. The tape tugs at one nipple a little, when John is tugging it taut, and Chris sucks in his breath and John stops. Then goes back to wrapping Chris against the board, but every time he passes over Chris’ nipples, he gives them a pinch, molding the tape to them. 

Once he’s done with that, he moves down and rolls a band of tape around Chris’ waist, and then pulls Chris’ hands down and straps Chris’ wrists to the same spot, just out of reach of the erection that Chris can feel straining towards his fingertips. Then John moves further down, taping Chris’ ankles together and then to the board.

“I’m gonna go get dressed, then check around for the parts for your bike,” John says. He sounds like he’s standing over Chris, maybe straddling him. “I was gonna get under my Charger today, but you’re using the one board I have, and my back’s not like it used to be, so I guess it’ll have to be your bike.”

Chris squirms against the tape. His upper body’s damn near immobilized, but his legs still have some sideways give, especially since the board is a little narrower than he is. Makes his ass feel like it’s balancing on a pole and every time he moves, the plug in him seems to grow a little. He knows it can’t be doing that but that’s what it feels like, pressing out at him, stretching him out.

“You’re hoping you don’t have those parts,” he grunts. Thinks he hears John’s breathing change, and splays out his fingers, cants his hips, even though he knows he can’t move either enough to reach his cock. But he thinks he knows what that looks like to the other man, him pinned down and helpless. “You know you don’t. The hell are you stalling for?”

“Well, for one, you suck cock like a teenager,” John says after a second. The way he drawls the insult, it’s like he took his voice and dragged it down Chris’ whole front like a heated rag. “That’s why you’re down there. I’m gonna work on your damn bike, and when my goddamn back cramps up I’m gonna roll you over and show you how to suck. See how fast you can pick up something, and then we’ll see about ordering your stuff.”

Chris swears, and then breaks his swearing to moan. He’s half-mindless at this point, jerking and twisting, forgetting why he’s trying to get at his aching cock and just trying to get it, to at least get a fingertip on it. He feels the air of it passing whisper-close to one finger and thinks—and then John lets out this low, guttural noise and it’s like a slap.

It cuts through Chris’ haze, gets his attention and he hears other things after that. Rustling clothes, a slick-rough muffled rasping, and then John groans again and Chris gets it. Sees it, sees it for all that he’s blind as a bat right now, him mummified up and lying there while John stands over him and jerks off. He sees it in his head and he arches against the tape, mouth wide open in a moan, thinking at least John didn’t gag him, thinking it might come down and he could just put out his tongue and lick it up and—

Something drifts over his chest. He almost thinks he makes it up, it’s so light, and then it comes again. John stomps hard, swears under his breath, and then steps back, panting, and Chris moans, disappointed, but _fuck_ at the same time he thinks he’s never been so wanting in his life.

“Goddamn mouth on you,” John mutters. He stumbles again, and then walks off.

Chris moans a few more times, listening to the echoes. He twists weakly, then flops back. The A/C blows lightly over him, teasing at whatever’s not covered in tape, and he can feel John’s come already starting to dry up on his chest. He drops his head against the board and pants.

* * *

John does what he says. Finds some of the parts, or so he says, and cleans out part of the barn to make room for Chris’ bike. Then he rolls Chris over to it, using his foot, and works on it. Tells Chris what he’s doing while he’s doing it. It’d be interesting—Chris isn’t a hobbyist but he always appreciates knowing how to fix something—if Chris wasn’t completely dying for something to get hold of his cock and just—he doesn’t even think he needs a blowjob or a handjob. Just a touch or something, one good grip.

He keeps trying with his hands. The thing is, he can bend his legs just enough to swing his cock so he thinks maybe he can get it, except he never does. Gets a fingertip for a second, the edge of a nail if he’s really trying, and all of that just fucks him over more. He’s sweating, can feel it pooling between him and the board, eating at the edges of the tape. His thighs are burning almost as bad as his cock, and when he gets fed up and smacks his head down against the board, it moves under him and he’s blind and can’t orient himself and panics for a second, thinking he’s just going to crash and then keep on going.

Something stops the board, and then John’s voice swings over him. “You woke up on the right side of the bed,” he says, tone dropping with amusement. “Got a fire up your ass today.”

“That’s not what’s up my ass,” Chris snaps. He twists at his hips again, then swears and strains up against the tape bundled around his chest, while little jagged jolts shoot through his hips, making them feel like road tar under a full summer sun. “Jesus fucking Christ, you asshole, would you just suck me off already?”

He’s just saying it. John laughs and puts something down, a wrench or a screwdriver that rolls a little, and then his hands are gripping Chris’ thighs. “I don’t know what the hell kept you from asking before,” he says

Then his mouth comes down. Chris cries out and his spine bows. He can’t get it off the board, the tape’s stretching but not that far, but he pushes and pushes and it keeps him from getting in air, but he can’t help it, he has too. The whole world’s come down with John’s mouth, right onto Chris, and he can’t hold up under that. He has to give, even if the tape doesn’t.

Everything goes kind of soft and dark. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s just…how it feels, behind the blindfold. Kind of like he’s floating in his sleep.

Something brushes his cheek and Chris feels his mind stir, sluggish. He doesn’t really want it to, but then he’s slapped. Not that hard, but it’s enough to knock him awake.

“You’re gonna do this, you could at least pay attention,” John says. Knocks his thumb up under Chris’ chin, and then his hand drags down Chris’ body, nails catching a little on the tape as he hits Chris’ chest, waist. There’s a graze on either side of Chris’ legs and then John settles his weight down on Chris’ knees, his breath coming wetter and wetter over Chris’ half-softened cock. “You’re gonna make me think you have no idea what you’re doing otherwise.”

Half-soft or not, it’s still all raw nerves, wet-tissue skin. Chris twists against his bonds, then lets his head go slack against the board, breathing raggedly. “Do I have to?”

John’s quiet for a second. His hands are moving, smoothing down on either side of Chris’ cock, and for all that that makes Chris’ hips jerk, has him digging his nails into the palms of his hands, it’s oddly reassuring.

“Just out of curiosity,” John finally says. He shifts back without getting off Chris and his weight drags Chris’ body with him, but the end of the plug sticks to the board and for a second Chris doesn’t hear anything but his own moan as he gets fucked down onto the thick, unyielding plastic. “…younger?”

Chris turns his head to the side. Some of the tape around his chest is wet enough that he can feel it pulling away from his skin, right at the side of his ribs. But it’s so tight it can’t get all the way off and when he shifts again it sticks itself back down. He shifts the other way and it burns a little, tugging his skin, and the burn doesn’t go away when he holds still. Goes down some, but spreads out at the same time, flowing down his side and then curving in, joining up with the low, throbbing ache of his ass where it’s stuffed around the plug.

He doesn’t know what John’s just asked him. He doesn’t want to ask, not because he doesn’t want to know—he actually doesn’t really care, can’t find the energy for that. It’s all he can do to just keep his head straight, and he’s goddamn lying down.

“I think _right now_ , I’d like to know how you like your cock sucked,” he mutters.

John pushes up, maybe getting off, maybe getting a different view. Then his hand curls around Chris’ cock. Pulls it up straight, like it’s hard, and his other hand scoops under Chris’ balls, runs its thumb over their back. Pinches a couple hairs, makes Chris hiss so he chokes on that when a tongue runs firmly up the side of his cock.

“Well,” John says, once his tongue’s run out of dick to lick. He’s hovering over the head, breathing at it, hot so it feels like somebody’s pressing down a piece of sandpaper, just little sparks of pain all over, that and the menace of impending movement. “Nothing fancy. Don’t need your tongue to give me an anatomy lesson or anything. But you could hold off on the teeth some. My finger’s still sore, and I think I’m over my icepack days.”

Chris surprises himself by laughing. “That what you did, back in the day?”

John’s mouth comes down again, all tight sucking heat, and Chris stops laughing. He can’t see where he is, can just feel it, and right then he feels like he’s been dropped from the roof and hit the floor, that’s how bad he gets slammed. Every inch of him goes rigid as steel, and at the same time he knows he’s shaking, he can hear the _crick-crick_ of the board’s wheels rocking, and he thinks if he wasn’t taped down, he’d probably rip off his own arms, just trying to hold on when that’s not even close to possible.

Then John pulls back. “That’s what was done to me, though you know, being fair, booze is usually a worse idea than you think. You’re young, you’re stupid,” he says. He pauses and then his finger skates up the side of Chris’ cock, light as a feather and sharp as a knife. “Damn. And suddenly I’m wondering how old you are.”

“Old enough to wish I’d been stupider, when I was younger,” Chris half-moans, half-mutters. He twists his hips as John draws back the finger, trying to follow that, and his half-erect cock twitches and he feels it all the way up in the hinge of his jaw, an incredible, bone-deep pain that has him seeing stars behind the blindfold.

Seeing those, and sucking his breath, and then whimpering as John swallows him down again. “God,” he says. He jerks at his wrists and it’s hard enough that the rounds of tape at his waist peel up some, sends a scorching stripe of pain over his belly and he arches into it, moaning, his fingertips tangling with John’s hair. Suddenly he doesn’t give a shit about talking, and so he just says whatever the hell comes out. “God, God, please, just suck me, please, just, I’ll do anything, I’ll fucking lick your cock till my mouth breaks, just _please_.”

John gouges his nails into Chris’ hips, throat wrapped around Chris like a velvet vise, and Chris rams up into it. Rocks his weight back onto the plug, feels his spine turn to complete water. His ass and thighs spasm and he slams his head back into the board, wondering how the hell he hasn’t just goddamn _snapped_ yet.

But he’s not that young. His cock thinks it is, but it’s like the rest of him, pushing too far and then paying for it, wringing itself out to get what it wants. Bit by bit, till he thinks he can measure the blood engorging his cock in drops, he swells in John’s mouth and then hangs like that, agonizingly, John working around him as his nerves twist and twist and never seem to come to an end. They just get thinner and tauter, till he’s all pain, white-hot with it, and—

When he comes, he’s so wrenched up that even that doesn’t release the tension. His body forces his climax through contorted muscles, locked joints, and it’s not till that’s over that Chris feels himself let go. On the downhill side, cock drooping in John’s mouth—and John pushes down onto it, sucks harder. Sucks like what he’s really doing, what he was always going after, wasn’t Chris coming but Chris coming apart.

Going slack, head and shoulders first, flattening against the board and then lolling as his chest hikes with the air rushing into his lungs, his belly and his hips turn to jelly. John massages the head of Chris’ cock with his tongue and Chris feels wetness leak out of it before John licks that way, feels it like it’s being dragged out from the center of his gut. He’s not even moaning now, not enough breath, just making jerked, thin noises. When John finally lifts his mouth, Chris lies there and thinks there has to be something limper than a wet rag, because that’s what he is.

John doesn’t do anything, or say anything. Chris isn’t sure for how long, but it’s long enough for Chris to breathe and breathe and finally start to feel as if he’s actually using the air. And then John gets up, gets something, and comes back and starts cutting off the tape.

The stuff around Chris’ ankles isn’t too bad, almost loose with sweat, and anyway, Chris’ nerves are still too blown out to register much. It starts to sting when John gets to Chris’ waist—John doesn’t touch the tape around Chris’ wrists, just pushes Chris’ hands up and out of the way—but it’s not bad enough for Chris to really wince till John’s at his chest.

“Shit,” Chris hisses, jerking his arms up. He bangs his wrists against his forehead, then drops them there, panting, still too laid out to hold up his arms as John peels up the tape. “Shit, _shit_.”

“Yeah.” John holds the strip and then his nail digs around under it, scratching at the adhesive so it comes away from Chris’ skin. 

It doesn’t pull so hard that way, but Chris still ends up feeling roughed-up. And then the pad of John’s finger crosses over the raw patch, feeling like a red-hot poker. Chris swears again, then lets out a harsh, low noise as the heat keeps going on through him till it rocks up in his ass, settling around where he’s still stretched around the plug. John pulls at the tape, angling it, and then works his nail deep under it, tunneling out a free space. Then he pulls the rest of the tape after it.

Chris moans, and John makes a rough noise himself. “Jesus, are you trying to kill yourself?”

“Hell you think, you’re the one who started it,” Chris grunts.

John snorts. His finger digs some more, till it’s sitting right on top of Chris’ nipple. “Yeah. Sure. Take a deep breath.”

Chris does.

“Okay,” John says, and then he rips the tape off three or four inches at once. His finger blocks the tip of Chris’ nipple from it, but even so—

—it’s nothing, and then it’s _brutal_. Chris lets out a near-scream, then drops back hard enough against the board to jar himself. He’s dazed for a couple minutes, while John works the tape off his other side, scraping the tacky residue with a thumbnail, and then John reaches his other nipple.

Chris braces himself, but John doesn’t yank off the tape. He just stops, his fingertip pressing down at the nipple, and then he makes a thoughtful noise. “Just get it—” Chris starts.

John bends over and closes his mouth around Chris’ other nipple, the one that’s already bared, and his mouth is vicious against it, viciously soft over the abraded skin, soft and wet and the wet’s going straight down, the skin’s all flayed anyway so there’s nothing to keep it from getting into Chris and Chris is still screaming from that when John pulls the rest of the tape. He barely notices that.

“You need a shower,” John says, taking his mouth and hands off Chris.

Chris sprawls there, gasping. He doesn’t even try to talk. Doesn’t try to move.

John picks him up and carries him into the shower in the barn, and then leaves him there. Does cut off the blindfold, but Chris has his eyes closed under that, so he doesn’t see John go. The concrete’s hard but it’s cool and his whole body feels like a single burnt-up sore, and for a while he’s fine like that.

Eventually he starts feeling gummy, and then aching where his hip and knee are pressed against the hard floor. He drags his eyes open, then hauls himself over onto his belly and arms. There are a couple things on the floor by him: soap in a soap dish, bottles of shampoo and conditioner. The showerhead’s got a detachable attachment and it’s there too, and a good thing because once Chris claws up the wall to get the water on, he figures out he’s not getting any higher.

He gives himself a half-assed rinse, fumbling with the attachment because his hands are still tied. The water’s lukewarm, which is perfect and he wastes an ocean or two letting it run over him, slowly bringing the sense back into his body.

His stomach growls, loudly enough to make Chris jump, and then it cramps on him. He grimaces, then gets on with actually cleaning himself, and that’s when he twists his wrists enough to see that John also partly slit the tape before leaving him. He turns the temperature of the water up some, and between that and liberal soaping, he gets the tape off his wrists without taking all the skin with it.

Chris lies down on his side and washes himself. Soap first. His cock feels like a raw piece of meat filled with cluster bombs and he sort of flicks the suds over it. His balls and ass aren’t so bad, though when his fingers run into the edge of the plug, he’s surprised even before the jolt goes up his ass and into his spine. He just—was that goddamn done.

He takes out the plug. Has to put his head down for a couple minutes, shoving the shower attachment up against his perineum, wedging its blunt end near enough—but not in—his hole so he can press his ass shut and fool it into thinking it’s not painfully empty.

His hair…well, he goes at it with the shampoo, knocks away the conditioner. It’s short and he’s not vain, and he’s knocked off the water and is just dragging himself over the bathroom threshold when John steps into the hall. John’s holding a plate and Chris smells it and moans and the way John looks at him right then, he thinks he’s getting shoved back into the bathroom and fucked.

John doesn’t do that. John does tighten his grip on the plate, but then he puts it down on the dryer and gets a couple towels for Chris. He uses one to fluff at Chris’ hair while Chris is dragging the other under his ass, and then drops it around Chris’ shoulders. Then he takes the plate off the dryer and puts it on the floor by Chris. “I’m going back to your bike,” he says. “Just try not to break your neck, all right?”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think I’m getting up that far,” Chris mutters, already reaching for the food.

He wolfs down half of it while John is walking away. Pauses, chewing on a mouthful of pancake, and then, slower but thinking about it, eats the rest without looking up. Then Chris sags back against the washer and looks at the empty plate. Listens to John tinkering in the barn.

Chris tugs the towel up, so that when he shifts over and down, it’ll end up under his head, and takes a nap.

* * *

When he wakes up, he assumes it’s still the same day because John’s still working in the barn. He’s stiff as hell, and has to spend a couple minutes working out each limb, and even then, when he staggers up, he bumps into the washer and kicks things and swears at himself. He’s noisy.

John doesn’t come over to see and Chris stumbles across the walkway and into the house. His stomach is growling at him again and he makes it to the kitchen, opens up the fridge. Settles for the leftover pizza, and then, wiping the grease off his mouth, he wanders into the living room and falls back asleep on the couch.

Isn’t out for as long that time, he thinks. About an hour. When he gets up, he’s feeling awake enough to wish he wasn’t, which tells him he’s about as ready as he’ll ever be to get moving again. He gets up and from the window he can see the barn lights are still on.

Chris stands in someone else’s house, naked, covered in bruises and tape burns, and wonders what he should do. And then laughs at himself. It’s a little too loose and makes him glad John is in the other building.

He’s chilly, actually. The heat’s come down some, and the humidity’s dropped even more, and he’s not shivering yet but he can feel his skin pimpling. So he goes into the bathroom and the pants John lent him are still there, puddled up on the floor. He puts them on and checks himself in the mirror, then rinses off his face.

Then he goes into the kitchen. He pokes around in the fridge and the freezer, and finds sausage and onions and peppers, which he cooks up and then leaves to keep warm on the stove. John still hasn’t come from the barn, but it’s not evening yet, so the man might just eat late.

Chris wanders around some more, and then ends up in the guest bedroom. It looks different and it takes him a while to realize that John’s moved his things into it. Unpacked nearly all of the motorcycle’s storage compartments, from the looks of it; Chris goes over and picks up and puts down clothes, water bottles, rubberbanded cash roll…his wallet, his gun and spare clip. His phone. He holds his phone for a while, and then he hears footsteps in the other part of the house.

When he comes out, John is setting the table. “This looks good, too,” John says, nodding at the sausages. “I never was much of a cook.”

“I used to help my mother when I was a kid,” Chris says. He comes over and takes the glass of water John hands him, and then pulls out a chair for himself.

John sits down, then watches as Chris slowly begins to lower himself into the wooden chair. His head cocks and then he gets up, and takes his plate and cup and silverware with him. Chris breathes in but keeps silent, turning as John goes into the living room and plops himself on the couch, puts his plate on the couch arm. Turns on the TV.

“My dad was one of those old-fashioned hardasses,” he says conversationally, as Chris follows him over and eases onto the much more forgiving cushions. “Didn’t get out the belt, he was too scared of my mother for that, but he caught you doing anything girly and he’d take off a couple layers of skin with the names he called you. Don’t know if my mother could’ve taught me, but I regret that she didn’t have the chance.”

Chris shifts in place, jiggling his plate, thinking about getting up, and instead pulls up his legs onto the couch. He balances his plate on his knee and leans back and thinks it’s not that bad. “Yeah, I had one of those.”

The evening news swells into the little silence between them. Nothing that is really news—still a drought, still water disputes. John makes an irritated sound and picks up the remote and flips around till he finds one of those travel shows, cheerfully clueless in beautiful locations.

“It’s just he kept it under wraps till my mother died,” Chris suddenly says, not quite sure why. “I was twelve, and I don’t know, I thought he just missed her. And by the time I realized it wasn’t just grief, he just had me and K—my sister, had us under his thumb. Took till I was eighteen to get out.”

“Army?” John says.

Chris cuts off some sausage, spears it with a piece of onion, and eats it. “No, I got a job working with this dealer we bought hunting gear from. He liked me, sent me out to the trade shows and I made enough to move out.”

John nods and starts eating, too. The corner of his mouth is tipped up when Chris finally caves and glances over. “Not Army, actually, Navy. Wasn’t bad for me, but I got hurt in a freak accident and had to take a medical discharge.”

Chris looks at him again, more closely, and John sighs and taps the side of his head. Now that Chris is looking, he can just make out a faint white scar coming out of the hairline near John’s ear, but it doesn’t look disabling.

“Inner ear damage,” John says. “Not that big a deal on land, pretty much takes me out on the water, even on the big ships.”

“You take the GI Bill, then?” Chris says.

“Yeah, associate’s degree in criminal justice. Figured if I couldn’t serve the country, I could at least help out the local community,” John says, chewing on some sausage. “That was back when I lived in an actual community.”

Chris makes an amused noise, and then looks over. But John isn’t offended; he just hikes himself against the couch back, then reaches up and works at one of his shoulders. “I never really went to college,” Chris says. “I thought about it a couple times, after I got my own business up and running. Thought it might help if I could understand…but never seemed to get the time. Always had the business or my family to take care of.”

“Well, you don’t have time now?” John asks.

“Yeah, but now I don’t have much of a need,” Chris says after a long moment. He actually thinks he might not say anything at all, but as time goes on and John doesn’t look like he’s going to pry, Chris just—gets anxious. “Just me to take care, and I don’t need a lot of money, or anything else.”

“Huh,” John says. He drinks some water, then changes the channel again, to a baseball game.

Chris follows the sport casually, and from the occasional comment John drops, the other man seems the same. But neither of them turn to other subjects and it doesn’t seem strained, or fake. They just don’t. They sit and eat, and lob the conversation lazily back and forth, and honestly, it’s relaxing. When they run out of food, John gets up and then comes back with a couple beers, and when they finish those off, he gets another round.

The game winds down a few hours later, and John turns to Chris. “I do need to order one part.”

“Okay,” Chris says. He’s just lowering his bottle after his last mouthful. He looks into it, feeling the heft of it in his fingers, watching a bead of moisture run around the rim as he twists it. “Did you already put it in?”

John’s a mouthful behind. He lifts his bottle. “Yeah,” he says, and then drains it.

He and Chris sit there for another minute. Then he gets up. He pivots so that he’s standing by Chris and Chris breathes in, but then John leans down. Puts his hand on Chris’ shoulder, warm, solid, not particularly pushy.

“Why don’t you go to bed?” he says, and then he walks away.

* * *

Chris stays on the couch for a while longer. John doesn’t turn off the TV and there seems to be an endless round of post-match analysis, which Chris doesn’t really want to watch, but he doesn’t reach for the remote. He listens to John wash dishes and then walk down the hall to the bathroom. Then walk out of the bathroom and into his bedroom.

Then Chris gets up. Does his dishes, flosses and brushes his teeth. Uses the toilet. Goes and gets himself another glass of water, and then he goes and he crawls into bed. He’s tired and he feels it more than ever once he’s sunk into the mattress, but unlike the last night, he doesn’t fall right asleep. He’s awake and he hates himself more than a little bit for it.

And then Chris surprises himself by sleeping in. It’s almost noon when he gets up. More sore than stiff, but he feels a little grimy too, sweated too much during the night. He takes a quick shower and stares at the borrowed pants, and then crumples them up. Wraps a towel around himself instead, and carries the pants out in his hand.

John’s in the kitchen, just finishing up lunch. “You’re up,” he says, blinking, and then he waves at the fridge. “I put a sandwich in there for you.”

“Thanks,” Chris says.

He gets that and stands at the counter and eats it, and John stands a little down the counter and looks him over. It makes Chris’ skin prickle and more than once he pauses mid-bite, or rolls his shoulders, or catches himself tugging at the towel around his waist, but John keeps looking at him.

“You can still see where the tape was,” John says. “I don’t know if you saw the first-aid kit—”

“It’s not that bad, it’s better to let them air out,” Chris says.

John’s brows rise, letting him know he was a little too quick off the mark. “I thought you worked with guns?”

“I saw you left mine in the room,” Chris says after a second.

“Yeah, well…” John gestures with his hand. Shifts a step closer, his eyes drifting across Chris’ chest. “I don’t think we can do the tape again.”

“I liked the tape,” Chris says.

John pauses and Chris can taste the heat in that pause, slow to peak like certain chilis and then getting its hooks so deep you think it’ll never let you go. “Yeah, you would,” John finally says. “I was working on your damn bike all morning, I’m sick of looking at it.”

“So come on,” Chris says. He still has a couple bites of sandwich, but he puts that down and then steps away from the counter. Leaves the pants on the kitchen floor.

He walks down the hall and John follows him and Chris knows the man is looking. Feels the way it slides down his back, rounds over his ass, and then, as they come up to the door to John’s bedroom, John swings his arm out in front of Chris.

Chris steps back to avoid it and John takes him by the shoulder and steers him into the room. Then down onto the floor, on his back, the towel unraveling from around his waist. He reaches for it, to pull it away, and John grabs his hand. “Leave that, it’ll keep the mess out of the carpet,” John says.

“Mess?” Chris says.

“Gonna shave you,” John says, disappearing into the hall.

It’s ten or so minutes before he comes back, bearing shaving cream and more towels and a straight razor. Ten minutes while Chris lies on the floor and digs his fingers into the carpet and watches his cock twitch and swell itself, feels his balls get heavy with need. John looks him over and then grins, and tosses a wet towel so that it lands with a stinging smack on Chris’ chest, right between his nipples, where the tape marks are the rawest.

“Oh, Jesus,” Chris hisses. He lets his head go down and stares at the ceiling.

“Think you can keep from touching?” John says, moving around him.

Chris decides he’d rather close his eyes. “Do I have to?”

“You keep that up, I’m gonna think what’s wrong is you’re too damn spoiled,” John says, but he goes over and opens and shuts a drawer, and then comes back and pulls Chris’ arms over Chris’ head.

They’re close enough that John can use the strip of fabric to tie Chris’ wrists to the bedpost. The strip is elastic, some kind of sports bandage, Chris thinks. He tests it a little, pulling his arms away from the post a couple inches and then letting the bandage drag them back, and then John starts smearing cream over his groin and he stops that.

The cream is too cold to ignore. Chris opens his eyes and watches John swirl his fingers in it, painting it so thick that it fluffs up the side of Chris’ cock. He can feel it sliding down behind his balls, oddly ticklish, and his ass clamps down in reflex and then he has to bite back a groan as that wakes up the ache inside of him.

“It’s a nice bike, I’ll give you that,” John says, wiping off his hands. He pushes Chris’ thighs a little further apart, then puts one hand on Chris’ belly. Uses his thumb to stretch up the skin just above the foam, getting it taut as he swoops the razor over it. “But all the custom work, it’s not really built for the endless road trip, if—”

“It’s my son-in-law’s bike,” Chris says. Now that the anticipation’s over, he’s finding this strangely meditative. He can’t really feel the razor itself, just the trail of its passing through the foam, the sudden flutter of air on his skin and the occasional tug as it catches but doesn’t cut a hair. “He’s a vet—for animals. I think he uses it for house calls. Where he lives, it’s not rural but people get spread out.”

He guesses he should worry about getting cut, but he’s not. He can see how John measures things up before moving the razor, can feel the methodical way the man is working. Lowkey in how smooth it is, too. When Chris’ cock gets in the way, John just turns his hand so that his knuckles push it out of the way and that, not the razor, is what makes Chris breathe in a little faster. That and how John’s looking at him. Careful but also, just _looking_. Taking in his fill, no shame about it but no shamelessness either, just doing it like there’s no reason not to.

“On pretty good terms with him, I take it,” John says. He’s cleared off half Chris’ groin now, but instead of moving to the other side, he lifts Chris’ scrotum and starts shaving it, working from back to front so he pulls it up to the point of discomfort.

Chris breathes out very slowly, instead of trying to shift himself to lessen the strain. He lets the strain wash over him and settle. “No, not really. He’s a lot more forgiving than me.”

John takes the razor away to wipe it off, and his thumb tracks through some foam, then skims over the newly-denuded skin, rubbing into the slight groove at the bottom of the scrotum. It’s—not ticklish. It starts off like it’ll tickle so Chris inhales sharply but then it changes, gets steeply more intense, like the pass of that thumb is playing some strings of Chris that haven’t been played in years and Chris squirms before he can help himself.

“I still don’t think I like him,” Chris breathes out. He presses his face into the side of his arm, then arches again as John just puts the edge of a thumbnail against Chris’ balls. Doesn’t flick it, just puts it there, and then takes it away and goes back to shaving. “I should. He’s a—a good person, he’s done things I respect, no reason I shouldn’t.”

“You still mad he took your kid?” John says.

Chris looks at John, but John’s looking down and all Chris gets is the top of the man’s head. “No. No, I don’t think it’s that. They’re in love, she’s happy, I just—look, I’d help him if he ever needed it, but do I have to like him?”

“Nope,” John says. He finishes up with Chris’ balls and then moves over to the other side of Chris’ cock. The foam’s started to dry up and John fluffs it with his fingers, moving a little faster, but still with the same deliberateness. “But he gave you his bike.”

Chris shrugs. “Didn’t give it to me. He asked if I could look after it for a while. They’re out of town. And I said I’d help him.”

John makes an acknowledging, thoughtful noise. He moves to wipe off the razor again, and then he reaches up and snags the towel that’s lying on Chris’ chest. Doesn’t lift it off, but just drags it down Chris. Presses it with his fingers when Chris humps a little, almost sending it falling off, and then swirls it around Chris’ cock, removing bits of hair, foam traces. He lets the towel wrap itself around Chris’ balls, at the base, and then closes his hand over it and slowly pulls both down and off Chris’ scrotum as Chris moans. Then he does the same thing to Chris’ cock, except when he gets to the end, he bunches up the towel and scrapes the coarse weave against the head till Chris stops moaning and starts cursing.

“Get over onto your knees,” John says.

He moves back. Chris heaves himself over, nearly straightens up flush with the bedpost and then realizes that’s wrong and backs up. John helps him with a tug at one thigh, and then a hand between his legs to spread them. His hands are tied low enough on the bedpost that it’s a strain to lift his head, so he drops it and leans it against the post.

The cream feels chillier going between Chris’ buttocks, or maybe he’s just wearing out. He keeps shifting on his knees, flexing his fingers around the bedpost, and John’s fingertips flutter twice against his hole, making it pinch, before Chris realizes the man is teasing him. He groans and shoves his ass back and John slaps him on that, just hard enough to sting.

Chris hangs onto the bedpost and moans, thinking about John talking about whipping him. He only half-realizes that his buttocks are being pushed apart, and that something’s grazing between them, and John’s nearly done shaving him when Chris manages to drag up his head.

“Wait, I missed some,” John says, smearing more cream at the back of Chris’ scrotum. “You know, it’s not like I think they took my kid either.”

“Then—then why’d you say that?” Chris mumbles. He’s not really paying attention. At least, he doesn’t think so; his head’s all taken up by the way John jams his wrist up between his ass-cheeks, spreading him more than he can spread himself, the graze of a knuckle into his perineum as John gets at those last patches.

John grabs the towel from where it’s fallen under Chris and rubs it into the cleft of Chris’ ass, just hard enough that Chris starts moving back into it. Chris can feel some of the nubbing feather into his hole and, mindless as he is, sensation-driven, he almost jerks his ass down, like he wants that stuffed into him.

He gets another slap for that, coming up under one buttock and jolting him into hiking his head up the bedpost. He clings to that, panting, his thighs quivering as he stays in a spraddle even after John backs off.

“I do think sometimes it’d be a lot more straightforward if it was that,” John suddenly says. “I guess that’s why. I actually do like them, sometimes, it’s just—do I have to be rational about not seeing my kid?”

“John,” Chris manages to grit out. “John, _fuck_.”

“Ah…shit,” John mutters, and for a wild second Chris thinks he’s fucked it up, it’s going to stop. But then John’s down behind him, laughing at the back of his neck as his ass gets tipped up by two wide palms. “Shit, you’re gone again, aren’t you? You’re so goddamn easy, I swear—how the hell you got _this_ far down by yourself…”

Chris moans and rocks back into John’s grip. He nearly sobs when he feels John’s fingers pressing into him, and then they’re filling him to the knuckle and that fucking hungry ache, it’s gone baseline, always there in the background till John plugs him up and then it flares and he can’t do anything but wrap himself around it in gratitude.

They’re not in him long enough. He whines like a dog, protesting, and John mutters about his ass getting used to it and Chris wants to say it’s _not_ , that’s the problem, he’s not used to it so he keeps wanting and wanting it and then there’s a replacement, a plug, maybe the same one. Doesn’t matter, it’s thick and long enough and when it finally seats in place, Chris slumps against the bedpost and shudders. Hands rub at his buttocks, squeezing and then spreading them away from the plug, rolling the muscle and he arches and grinds his erection into the carpet, forgetting about the towel, about keeping clean.

“So, that whipping,” John says. He pauses for Chris to whimper needily and then laughs. “Okay, then. It’s gonna be the end of the week before my supplier sends somebody out, you should be able to sit your _son-in-law’s_ bike by then.”

As he talks he walks away and comes back and then Chris hears a whistling, just in time to grab the post.

The belt cracks across his ass and when the pain blooms up, bright enough to make lights dance before Chris’ eyes, Chris can’t keep his head up. He drops down onto his elbows. Presents himself for it, he thinks, dazed, an acid, almost citrus taste in his mouth, and then the second blow comes down on him, a little below the first, rocking the plug in him so that his legs cut out from under him.

“Get up.” John scuffs his feet. “Come on, Chris. How long were you on the road again?”

“Six,” Chris gasps. He pries his belly off the floor, shaking. “Six days.”

“Well, four more,” John says, and then lays them down, precise and brutal.

They’re so fast that Chris doesn’t have time to collapse. The full impact doesn’t hit him till the last one, and then— _God_. He can’t stay up, his hips swing over and his knees slide, and he’s going down on his side when John’s arm locks up under his waist. John’s hand closes around Chris’ cock and that’s it.

Chris lies limp afterward, dangling from John’s grip. He hears the other man cursing him as if it’s coming through a swimming pool of water, and then feels John shift him a little, push at his legs. Something’s smeared up the insides of his thighs before John moves, grabs each of Chris’ thighs and pushes them together, closing them around—cock, it’s John’s cock and John shoves it between Chris’ slicked-up legs. He humps into Chris’ ass, coming down on the fresh welts, setting off fires that have Chris gasping helplessly, still too weak to do anything else. His groin hair feels like steel wool, scraping across Chris’ buttocks, and his belly catches and then tips the end of the plug that’s still in Chris and Chris shakes and sobs and then manages to wrench his head around, bite into the bandage wrapped around his wrists, just as John grunts and jerks forward.

Come drips down the back of Chris’ balls as they sag down together, Chris still tucked under John. Chris thinks he might have broken a few things this time, not just worn them out, and he…he just thinks he probably didn’t need them anymore, anyway.

* * *

“You should take a nap,” John says, helping Chris slide into another pair of sweats.

Well, honestly, he puts them on Chris, and while he does that, Chris leans against the wall. “I just got up.”

“Yeah, so?” John says.

Once the pants are on, John steps back. He looks over Chris, and then he turns around. They’re still in the bedroom and he hasn’t cleaned up the floor: towels are all over the place, the shaving cream jar is rolled against the wall, little glints wink up from the carpet where the sunlight hits so it’s clear John’s going to need to vacuum sooner rather than later. 

He did help Chris wipe himself down, and he smeared some antiseptic cream on one welt that had split and bled a little at the edge. So Chris watches John pick up things, and considers all the things that happen when Chris shifts—aches and sparks and flares and low, gut-tugging feelings that aren’t quite pain—and then pushes off the wall and onto the bed.

Hits a little harder than he was planning on. He grunts and the bedsprings creak, and John looks up. Chris thinks about it being John’s bed, not the guest bed, but John’s expression doesn’t change. After a moment, the other man goes back to tidying up.

“You gonna eat before you go out this time?” John asks.

Chris pushes his face into the bed. He should, he thinks. “I need to piss.”

“I’m gonna get some water, and then I’ll come back and help with that,” John says.

He’s steadying Chris over the toilet, hand under Chris’ elbow, when he breathes in sharply. “My kid and I, we’re not separated,” he mutters. “He just doesn’t want to live out here. Can’t blame him, but I don’t feel like leaving, either.”

“When my wife died,” Chris says meditatively. He finishes up pissing and lets John prop him over the sink and starts washing his hands. “We moved as far as I could afford. My daughter hated me for it, but I couldn’t look at anything without seeing Vic—my—Victoria.”

John gets him back to the bed, and hands him that glass of water, and stands over him as he drinks all of it. He hands it back and then flops onto his side. He’s thinking about closing his eyes when John reaches down and curls his fingers around the underside of Chris’ jaw. Not squeezing, not forcing it up, but needing attention.

Chris looks up. “I’m still trying to decide whether the problem is you’re a smart mouth, or too dumb of one,” John says. His thumb rolls a little, almost a caress, and then he pulls his hand away. “Stiles didn’t mind moving after Claudia died, but he threw a fit when I quit as sheriff. He didn’t even like the job, hated thinking I might get hurt. I still don’t get it.”

He doesn’t say anything more than that, just looks down. After another moment, he turns and walks out. Chris shifts a little, trying to get off his ass—the welts curl around the side, but when he moves onto his belly, the slide of cloth over his shaved groin is too distracting—and then settles for uncomfortable over teasing. Strangely, he doesn’t have any trouble falling asleep.

* * *

It’s night when Chris wakes up. So late that he feels guilty—and pauses for a second, thinking about how _fresh_ that feels, like it’s never come up before instead of just being a week or so since the last time—and then crawls out of bed because John isn’t there.

“I took a nap in the barn, and I stay up a lot anyway,” John says, when Chris finds him in the living room.

Chris grunts and moves into the kitchen. He’s hungry again, but doesn’t want anything too heavy; his gut has that twisting feeling that says it’ll punish him for any strain on it. He ends up having some soup. Behind him John watches a late-night talk show, then turns off the TV and goes into the hall. The shower goes on, goes off, and then John’s bedroom door shuts.

After the soup, Chris limps to the bathroom and makes himself take a proper shower. He feels like he’s always just a few minutes out of one, but he can smell himself, smell that sour, stale-sweat edge. The tape marks are fading a little—still sting when he rubs too hard with the soap—but he feels at his ass and then sighs and digs around in the cabinet till he finds the antiseptic cream.

Before he heads back to the bedroom, he checks out the lone bookshelf in the living room. The bottom shelf is all criminal-justice textbooks. Next two are a mix of fiction—potboiler thrillers—and true-crime non-fiction. Up top are a bunch of books on mythology. He thinks they probably belong to John’s son, mostly because of how they tend towards lots of illustrations and brightly-colored covers, compared to the dark neutrals of the rest.

He grabs a book about Prohibition gangsters and takes it back to his room. Chris reads about a chapter and a half before putting it aside and going to sleep.

* * *

Chris wakes up very early the next morning, before John does. He does his usual routine in the toilet—nearly gives himself an erection pissing, not thinking about how the calluses on his hand are going to feel against his shaved skin—and then makes breakfast. That’s when John joins him. They eat on the couch again; Chris is lying on his side and John sighs and hands him an extra pillow to prop himself against.

“My daughter and her husband are honeymooning up in Canada,” Chris says. “I told her I’d give her a call at the end of every week.”

“She worried about you?” John says, lowering his fork.

Chris almost says no. He stares at his food for a few seconds. “She thinks I might not have anything to do now that I don’t have to worry about her.”

“You seem like the type who never stops worrying,” John says.

“Yeah,” Chris says, shrugging.

They eat in silence for a few minutes, and then John lowers his fork again. “When do you usually call?”

“Dinner,” Chris says.

“Well, all right, that’s enough time,” John says, and then he goes back to eating.

After a couple minutes, he turns on the TV, puts on the news. Neither of them say anything, and when they finish—Chris first—they separately wash their dishes. Chris opens up the dishwasher to rack his while John’s scrubbing, and sees that it’s almost full but everything’s dry and clean. He starts putting things away, moving slow and careful, letting each twinge ease out rather than powering through them.

He’s still at it when John heads out to the barn. When he finally finishes, he puts his hands on the counter and then presses down on them, rolls his shoulders up and then back. Lets the soreness of his body rise up his spine, then come down through his back and hips, like water running down. It pools a little, deep in his belly, a warmth that’s just shy of discomfort, and his cock jerks against the loose front of the sweats.

Chris looks out the window over the sink, at the yellow, half-burnt landscape around the house, hills of bone-dry grass. He imagines them covered in flames, red over black char, and then he shakes his head. Rubs his hand back over his hair, before going out to the barn.

John’s not working on the bike, but on one of the cars. A Chevrolet, old enough and striking enough that Chris assumes it must be a pricy vintage; he isn’t a car aficionado but he can peg style, he thinks.

“Why here?” he asks.

“Cheap,” John grunts, wrenching at something under the hood. He steps back, taking out a short, L-shaped tube as he does, and wipes sweat off the side of his face and then switches to a different wrench and gets back in there. “Out of the way. Also, I ran out of gas nearby.”

Chris looks around, then walks a few feet to the left. The bike is there and he puts his hand down on the seat for a second, letting his fingers sink into it. Feels a lot more giving when he hasn’t been on it for a couple days, he thinks, and then he rounds it to get the roller board that’s ended up half-under the car behind it. He steers the board out with his foot and then ambles it back towards John, listing a little as that warmth in his belly starts spreading through his ass.

“Sounds kind of like one of those old urban legends, you know,” he says. “You run into the last owner and get stuck with it, and can’t get rid of it till you pass it on.”

“Well, it’s not really urban around here, unless you’re a ground squirrel,” John says dryly. He leans out of the car again, puts the wrench aside and then wipes off his hands as he slides over to the side of the car, squinting down at the engine. “And didn’t really meet the owner, ‘less you count accidentally finding the guy’s ashes when I was cleaning out the barn.”

Chris pauses halfway into a crouch. “What?”

“Auction,” John says. He glances over and the side of his mouth that’s visible is sober but Chris gets the sense the other side’s crooked into a smile. Then he turns away, shaking his head, and squats down too as he paws through a toolbox. “Day I showed up, the town was auctioning off the property. He didn’t have any heirs, though he filed a will and stuck enough money in a bank account to cover his cremation.”

There’s not much Chris can say about that, so he doesn’t. He seats himself on the board as best he can, bracing a foot against it so it won’t move, but it does anyway and he hisses.

John looks up. At him, long and thoughtful, and Chris breathes in again, less sharply but just as long. “Just how long are you gonna do this?” John suddenly asks.

Chris shrugs. “I just started, honestly. How long—”

“Why, you asking for pointers?” John says. He rocks on the balls of his feet a little, then glances at the toolbox. His hand moves over and then he takes out something, plus a chamois cloth that he wraps around it, rubbing so that Chris can’t really make out what it is. “Nobody got goddamn married. I just had a job where I thought I was helping people, doing some good—no dreamer, all right, but I figured a little difference is still a difference. And then…”

He’s silent for a couple seconds. His hands slow and metal glints from the middle of the cloth. Then he pulls that off and it’s a length of tubing, polished up. He reaches back into the toolbox and pulls out what looks like pieces of a leather belt that’s been cut up.

“You see something that change your mind?” Chris finally says.

“I guess you could say that. I did see something.” John juggles the tube and the leather strips in his hands, then looks up at Chris. “But it’s more like I just realized, I think I’ve done enough. I could keep doing it, but I don’t—I don’t _want_ to. I got tired, basically.”

Chris nods. The board keeps moving on him, and if he steadies it with his hands, he has to keep sitting straight up, which puts pressure on his ass. So he leans back, and then he twists over and lies down. John’s gotten up and is coming over anyway, walking up between Chris’ legs as Chris gets his back against the board and splays his knees.

“It doesn’t sound that great, whatever my son says, but I just got tired of being good,” John says, almost wistfully. “Decent, moral, upstanding, all that. Kind of hard to enforce the law if that’s how you’re thinking.”

“Doesn’t that depend on what code you’re talking about?” Chris says.

John looks him from head to waist, and then snorts, head tilting. Then the man gets down, puts his hand on Chris’ waistband. He gets up a fistful of the sweats and then pulls them down Chris’ hips as Chris plants his palms against the floor, lifts his ass enough to allow the cloth to slide out from under it.

“Huh,” John says, picking up Chris’ cock between his thumb and forefinger, casual in a way that makes Chris drop his head against the board. “Little slow today.”

“I’m getting old,” Chris says, looking at the ceiling.

“You’re fishing,” John laughs. He gives Chris’ thigh a pat, and then his fingers drag up to just rasp their roughened tips over the sensitive shaved skin, and lift just as Chris cants his hips into it.

John shuffles back a few inches, grabs something—some kind of oil, which he uses to paint the inside of the tube. Then he picks up Chris’ cock again and slides the tube over it.

The fit is very close. Chris can feel his skin stick a little, rubbing through the oil to the metal itself. But it goes all the way on and down, till the one end is pressing its edge—filed smooth, he thinks—against his groin, while the other is just digging at the back of his cock head, just short enough to let it flare out and help hold the tube in place.

“I tried to kill my son-in-law once,” Chris says.

“Yeah?” After the tube is on, John messes around near the base of it, pulling at something on its sides, and then his fingers run around the back of Chris’ scrotum, followed by a strip of leather.

Chris curls his hands against the barn floor, hissing slowly, feeling his balls try and draw themselves up before the leather tightens around the top of them, forcing them back down. “When he first started dating my daughter. I didn’t think—I thought he’d get her hurt.”

“You get close?” John says. He jerks at the leather a little. He’s buckling it but also, Chris thinks, he wants to see the way Chris bends his body at the tug.

“Kind of.” The strap settles, and then Chris’ cock hangs down too, weighted by the tube. It feels odd, ungainly, and swings uncomfortably as John pulls the sweats back up his legs. “Not really. If I really wanted him dead, he would’ve been dead.”

John gets up and back on his knees. He still has an unused strap dangling from his hand and Chris lifts one arm a few inches. Then puts it down as John grins at him, leans over like he’ll grab Chris’ wrist and instead he cups his hand around Chris’ balls, over the sweats, and fondles them, rubbing the nubbly inside over the tender skin till Chris’ cock pushes up against the tube, doubles down on aching and Chris is trying to claw his nails into solid concrete, gasping.

Then John lets go. Lets Chris just twist there, lying on the board, before he reaches out again. This time he does get Chris’ wrists and he buckles them together with the cut-down belt, tight enough that Chris’ cock twitches again, painfully enough to make Chris thump his head back against the board.

Chris lets a groan spill out of him, head lolling, the rafters overhead spinning a little. His wrists drop onto his belly and he grunts, then rolls over, nearly off the board, and teeters like that as John gets up, steps back, rubs his hands over his hips and never stops looking at Chris. Chris’ cock surges against the steel tube, feeling as if it might just burst it, the pressure is so hard, and Chris wraps his hands over the edge of the board like he’s going to wrench it to pieces.

He doesn’t. His cock doesn’t break the tube. It swells for a few more agonizing seconds before, slow and steady and hellish, subsiding to a soreness that keeps his hips shifting. “Fuck,” he mutters, pressing his cheek against his arm. “Fuck.”

“You want to go in?” John says.

When Chris looks up, the man’s retreated back to the car he’d been working on. He’s still looking but his hands are reaching for tools, his head’s starting to turn.

“I want to suck your cock,” Chris says. He watches John’s hand almost miss the edge of the toolbox. “You said you were gonna teach me. You have to let me, to do that.”

“I’m gonna finish this,” John says, after a long, long second. He puts his hand down again and easily picks out the tool he’s looking for, and then ducks his head under the car hood. “It’s not even an hour since breakfast.”

Chris shrugs, and then has to push himself a little bit back as the board rolls under him, to keep from falling off. His balls tighten up and he jerks his hips and then turns half-over onto his belly, deliberately pressing himself into the board, driving up that ache. “Your cock gonna wait?”

“You gonna stare at it till it doesn’t?” John says, pointedly turning his head away. “Nice thing about being old, you get patient whether or not you feel like it.”

That strikes Chris as funny, for some reason. He snorts, then rolls back onto his hip. The blood rushes back into his balls and he inhales sharply, feeling the way his cock tightens up in the tube, and then breathes out so roughly that it’s near another snort.

John must think it’s one, because he glances over. “Well, fine, I’m not going anywhere,” Chris mutters, not quite meeting his eyes. “But what else are we going to do? Talk about our kids?”

“You want to?” John says, turning back, shoulder dipping in a shrug.

He bends over, tugging at something. His jeans stretch across his ass and Chris finds himself just watching that, just tracking how the denim cups and then compresses his buttocks. A spark of pain makes Chris realize he’s biting his lip, too hard, so he sucks at it instead, looking and thinking.

“Your kid in a cult or something?” he finally says.

“A cult?” John echoes. His hand drops back and tosses out the screwdriver, and then he gets into the engine with both hands, jerking something into place.

“Them, they,” Chris says.

John laughs. “Oh, Jesus, no. If anything, Stiles has…Stiles handles his own business, has ever since his mother died.”

Chris rotates his wrists a little. He can’t move them much without the leather digging in, irritating what the tape’s already flayed. “So he’s just fucking them.”

“He’s doing things with them that I try not to ask too much about,” John mutters. “Mostly because if I did, I’d probably end up helping, and there’s a reason why bidding on some dead hippie’s old commune seemed like a good idea. Why, was that what you were worried about with your son-in-law?”

“If he’d been in a cult, I would’ve known how to deal with that,” Chris says under his breath. He pulls at his wrists again and then arches with the twinge, lets it build as it rolls through him and down to make his cock strain against its metal prison again. “I think it was more that he ended up better at it than I was.”

“At what?” John grunts, pulling his hands out of the engine.

Chris turns onto his back, letting his wrists drag across his belly. They catch the sweats and pull them against his groin and he shivers a little bit. The scratch over the skin there is starting to get hot, pins and needles. He’s probably chafing.

“Not killing people,” Chris says.

He watches the ceiling till John appears over him, and then he watches the man’s face. A minute or so passes and John doesn’t move, so Chris rocks onto his side. Grabs the edge of the board and then slides his leg off to brace his knee against the ground. Then twists himself over onto his knees. He sits up and John pulls open his fly and feeds Chris his cock.

Chris thinks he’s better than the first time, but he knows it’s not a spectacular improvement. Still, John groans and digs his hands into Chris’ shoulders. Pulls one up to crush against the back of Chris’ head; Chris gags a little, unexpectedly deep-throating, and then leans sloppily into it, sucking so his chin gets streaked with spit. He puts his hands up and braces them against John’s knees and John heaves up a sound from so deep, it seems like it’s coming from the earth instead of any human.

It goes right through Chris, shakes down like it’s stroking him from inside-out, especially his cock and he’s bucking up his hips as John comes down his throat, bucking and rolling like he thinks he can fuck off the goddamn tube.

“A lot?” is all John says afterward.

“I was good at _that_ ,” Chris says. Panting, voice raspy, throat burning a little. He thinks he can feel the back of it swelling, right where John’s cock was bumping.

John looks at him and that hand slides from the back of Chris’ head to his nape, then squeezes so Chris tips into it.

Then John pulls him up. They go back into the house. John pushes Chris down onto the couch, on his belly, and then holds him there, palm hard and flat against Chris’ neck. Then John lets go and grabs a blanket, tosses it half-over Chris. “I guess start lunch in another hour and a half. I put steaks to thaw out,” he says, stepping away. “You’re not calling her till dinner, right?”

Chris nods. John walks off towards the barn. Does the man expect Chris to sleep, Chris thinks, and his eyes are already closing.

* * *

An hour later, John wakes Chris up by pulling down the sweats and sucking at Chris’ balls till precome is smeared all down the side of the tube over Chris’ cock, and then John licks that up too. “Said you wanted to get to the point,” Chris half-groans, half-begs, grinding his bound hands into the couch arm above his head. “So—”

“Well, you don’t,” John says, walking off again.

Chris doesn’t go back to sleep this time. He lies there on the couch and seems to go through an unending, tortured cycle where his cock tries to get hard, can’t and collapses in agony, and then the pain twists into something else, something that drags rough, desperate noises out of him and it starts all over again.

Forty minutes in, he realizes, with the hazy logic of a sleepwalker, that he can’t stop it while he’s just lying there, and he makes himself get off the couch. He gets into the kitchen, gets a pan on the stove and the steaks out and unwrapped, and he’s hanging onto the counter space between them, whining and humping into the goddamn cabinet, when John wanders in.

John shoves him over the table. He stays there, hears oil sizzle and then spit as meat gets thrown on. The tap runs, and then John comes over and hooks the back of his sweats with two fingers and draws those down. Then slips fingers into him, two and three and then two again. Just—just keeps doing that. Pumping them in and out, slow, avoiding his prostate as he hitches and hikes his ass and groans for it, and then giving that a languid circle after he’s grown too exhausted to move. He’s still got a welted ass and John’s knuckles run over them, setting Chris to shuddering from buttocks down.

The steaks take ages to cook, and John fingers Chris till they’re done. When John pulls away, it feels like the air rushes right in, chapping the rim of Chris’ hole and stabbing deep into its unoccupied center. Chris presses his face into the table and still feels like he’s spinning out of control.

John brings the steaks over. Sits down. Pushes Chris between his knees, half-slumped with only the support of his leg keeping Chris up, and then he eats. Occasionally he takes a piece and takes Chris’ head by the hair, and tilts Chris back and forces it into Chris’ mouth. Chris eats it in the most technical sense of the word.

When he’s finished, he gets up and does the dishes. Pours some water down Chris’ throat. Chris revives a little bit then, swinging his head around to rub the wet on his mouth off on John’s hand, and then, as John sucks in his breath, he leans in so he can feel the wisp of that breath on his lips.

“Need to piss,” he mutters.

“You are a goddamn—” Then John stops himself, and just drags Chris to the bathroom.

After Chris finishes, John takes some toilet paper and cleans him off. Not just the piss, but all the precome too, wiping off the metal tube and the strap holding it on Chris. Then pushes Chris to his knees again, so Chris rests his forehead against John’s hip while John washes off his hands.

Chris ends up in John’s bed at some point after that. John’s in and out, but when he’s in, his fingers are in Chris’ ass, working it till it’s stretched and then raw and then spasming, and then just slack as if all the muscles have snapped. He keeps it slow, pinning Chris’ hips and just holding perfectly still whenever Chris digs up enough energy to try and fuck himself back. It’s a rhythm that pulps Chris from inside-out, turns his trapped cock into an ache so deep he doesn’t think it’ll ever come out of it.

When John’s out—when he’s not there, it’s worse. Because Chris thinks about John’s fingers, about John’s cock, about every part of the man that he wants to have on him, taking him apart, and he thinks about things he shouldn’t, like forgetting to call Allison. Never coming back. Just burying his face in the bed till everything goes black and not caring if the black lifts or not.

“I could goddamn keep you in the back,” John tells him. In now, lying against Chris’ back, his fingers pushed up Chris, other hand rolling Chris’ balls against its palm as Chris shudders and arches his head against John’s shoulder. “Nobody fucking comes in anyway. And I guess they did, I could stuff a sock in your mouth. You wouldn’t need it, you’d keep your goddamn mouth shut anyway, but you’d _like_ it, wouldn’t you?”

“Jesus,” Chris groans. “Jesus Christ, I—I—fucking—”

“Fuck.” John says that and it’s harsh. Burrs against Chris’ nape where it comes out, like a buzzsaw, unpleasant enough to slice out some of the haze. “Fuck. Better than whatever the fuck was in your head, right? When you came—”

“Yeah,” Chris grunts.

John stills. Just holds Chris, and it’s by the ass and the balls but for a second, with the way he’s just leaning his weight, it feels like he’s got all of Chris.

Thinking. Not something Chris wants to do right now, but it happens anyway. Always happens like that, he thinks tiredly, and then ends up laughing to himself. “Yeah, pretty much. Just—not like you really plan on it, just…you think. Wonder. You do—”

“Yeah,” John says, low and long, on the exhale. And then he shifts, letting go of Chris’ balls, twisting away and then back to put something up by Chris’ head. “Yeah. You need to.”

Chris stares at the phone. He moves, and John doesn’t move but the way Chris’ body has settled on John’s fingers, it just…Chris inhales and inhales and inhales, till he thinks his skin is filled to bursting, and he lets it out. Lets it burn on the way, but that’s fine. It’s clearer afterward.

He moves his wrists up, gets his fingers over the phone. When he unlocks it, he notices it’s already been set to the wireless here.

Allison picks up on the first ring. _“Dad?”_ she says. _“Hey, how are you?”_

“Okay,” Chris says. Then half-bites a breath as John abruptly pulls out his fingers, rolls off the bed. He knows Allison can hear something and feels an odd warmth and then realizes it’s a flush: embarrassment, something that hasn’t come up in a while. “I went out of town for a couple days. Up at a bed and breakfast.”

John snorts. He’s on the other side of the room, probably out of Allison’s hearing range, but Chris is annoyed anyway. And John looks back and sees it and grins before he ducks into the hall and Chris—he misses what Allison says.

 _“I said, what are you doing?”_ she repeats patiently. _“You sound a little tired.”_

“Did more than I probably should,” Chris says after a second. “Don’t worry, all right, just…not as young as I used to be. Just getting outside, enjoying the outdoors. Been a while, I probably pulled something. How’s—”

 _“It’s fine,”_ Allison says, too quickly. _“I mean, fun! It’s fun, we’re having a great time and—and Dad, please, I really am fine. I just wanted to check that…that you’re not too bored by yourself.”_

Chris laughs, and means it. “I’m not bored.”

Allison laughs too, sounding looser, and she rambles on a little bit about the animals Scott and she have seen, baby moose and foxes and deer. He listens, and then asks half-heartedly after Scott, who she says is fine, and then she tells him she doesn’t want to keep him. _“But take care of yourself, all right?”_ she says. _“We’ll be back soon.”_

“It’s fine, Allison,” Chris says. He pauses, and then lets his head sink into the bed, his eyes almost closing. “It’s fine. Don’t think about that, just have fun, all right?”

 _“Okay,”_ she says. He can tell she’s smiling. _“Love you, Dad.”_

Chris opens his eyes. He’s slow, she’s already hung up when his mouth starts to shape out words, and then he looks up and John’s back. Bending over him.

John takes the phone away and then pushes Chris over, climbs on top of him before grabbing Chris’ hips and hauling him up so he has to fold himself over to avoid running his head into the wall. While he’s busy with that, John is unbuckling the strap on the tube, then pulling the whole thing off and before Chris can breathe for it, his cock is down John’s throat.

He comes almost instantly. But John holds him in place, squeezing his hips and nursing his cock, drawing out the aftershocks. Chris’ balls crush in on themselves, emptying out, and his cock seems to pulse come into John’s mouth for ages.

When John finally gets off him, Chris is done. Just done. He sprawls there and his chest heaves up and down without any air actually going in, and when sweat drips into his eyes and burns them, he can't even blink.

John looks at Chris for a second, then lifts his hand. He wipes at the sweat and Chris finally manages to close his eyes as he does. Then turns his head, presses his mouth to the side of John’s hand.

“I don’t know if I’m helping or not,” John mutters. “And I used to care about that kind of shit, and then I stopped caring, and now you’re just fucking it up for me.”

He tips his fingers up under Chris’ chin, pushes it till Chris’ head rocks against the wall, and then takes them away so that Chris drops his head. The movement is small, but it’s enough to start Chris on a slow, stuttering slump that eventually has him crumpled up over the pillows. That’s where John leaves him.

* * *

When Chris wakes up, he’s been cleaned up, but he’s in John’s bed, and John’s sleeping on the other side of it. He looks over for a few minutes, then goes back to sleep.

Things go like that for the next few days, while they’re waiting for John’s supplier to send out the missing part. Chris doesn’t get dressed again, doesn’t get covered unless John tosses a blanket over him. Sometimes he gets up and helps with chores, cooks and washes dishes or dusts, but mostly he’s tied up and waiting around for John.

The tube goes on his cock first thing in the morning, and after that his hands get tied. Then he sucks John off in the bathroom or during breakfast. He gets a lot better at that—he’s sucking John off at every meal, and sometimes in between them, if John gets too frustrated with whatever car he’s working on. 

Or John bends him over and fingers him till his legs are too shaky to hold himself up, and his cock’s dripping precome so much it’s almost a constant stream. Massages his balls, works knuckles up and down his perineum, talking dirty about milking him and starting up the farm again, like the hippie who used to live here. When he gets too close to passing out, John stops and leaves him alone. Maybe shoves a plug in him, so his hole keeps on spasming around it.

He spends the days in that den in the back of the barn, half-curled in the arm-chair in a daze. A day in, John brings in another cut-down belt and buckles it around Chris’ neck, and then hooks a long chain to it, locking the other end to a ring in the wall that’s left over from when it was a stable. Most of the time the chain just lies in loops across the floor, but once Chris has to piss and feels steady enough to not wait for John, so he limps around the corner to the bathroom. The chain’s just long enough for that, but then John catches him on the way back and drags him into the den, reties his hands behind him and straddles him and pinches and teases his nipples till they’re red, swollen twice their size, so tender it actually hurts less when later that night, John compresses them under ointment and a bandage.

“Gonna be able to sit the bike, but I’ll fall off halfway through town,” Chris mumbles one night.

He’s not tied up at night. No collar, no cock tube. No touching: John always stays on his side of the bed and somehow they never end up tangled together, even though they’re both pretty tall and the mattress is a smallish queen. It makes sense, but Chris keeps waking up to find himself rolled over facing the space between them.

“So what?” John mutters back. “Happened to me. You’ll live.”

John never looks that tired, but he’s a light sleeper, always seems to be up enough to answer Chris. They do most of their talking at night, actually, and there’s more of that than you’d think. Chris knows John’s son is in a relationship with two men, knows John’s wife died in a hospital of a neurological disease, knows John knows more about high-powered rifles than local law enforcement outside of the big cities normally does. And John knows Chris regrets not being the one to kill his father, knows Victoria killed herself with a knife to the chest, knows Chris really wasn’t kidding about nearly killing Scott.

“That’s the odd thing,” Chris finds himself saying. “I think I want to, now.”

The other man looks at him for a long time. It’s not the usual look, not the one during the day that makes Chris twist against whatever the hell’s torturing him, still begging for it. And that’s odd too, since it’s at night that Chris finally gets to come. And then relax, and not fight anything, not even himself.

Or maybe not. He can’t close his eyes forever; if it was that easy, he’d have just put himself in the ground years ago. “You’re supposed to just do it, right?” he adds after a moment. “You don’t think about it, it doesn’t matter whether you want to or not. It’s just what you have to do, something to take care of. Be around for people.”

“Till what, your kid grows up?” John says. He pauses, and then a dry chuckle escapes him. “I was just thinking, I used to tell Stiles, you’ll be running this show soon enough so don’t be so eager to take it in. It’s different when you’re in it. But I think it’s worse when you’re out.”

“You miss it?” Chris says.

John winces, then moves his head down and his hand up to rub at his eye. “Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Yeah. I shouldn’t. I’m just not—but yeah, I do.”

“So what,” Chris says. “You’re just going to fuck me in a barn forever?”

John’s head snaps back up. He stares at Chris and Chris feels the urge to press his shoulders up, posture—or maybe present himself, remind John why the man thinks he’s worth a good look. It is getting all fucked up, Chris thinks, and he doesn’t care and he thinks that for once that’s not down to him being too damn tired. He’s just…

Well, he likes this. He’s facing up to it, if that’s even the right word for it. He’d have to be not just determined, but flat-out pathological about ignoring things to pretend this all wasn’t happening, or was just a temporary aberration. And he never was able to do that; family genes skipped him, as far as that’s concerned.

“You’re not even fucking me,” he says, deliberately, staring John in the eye.

“You’re smart for a guy who carries a gun that big, and then walks in here emptyhanded,” John says. He rolls onto his back and closes his eyes. “You know it’s coming tomorrow.”

Chris tenses. “Yeah. Afternoon, you said. So…night by the time you get it in?”

“Something like that,” John agrees, before they both pretend to go to sleep.

* * *

The next morning, John leaves Chris alone. Doesn’t tie him up, collar him, anything like that. They talk—meaningless small chat—and eat meals together, and then John goes out to the barn and Chris goes to the guest room.

He checks over his things again, gets them ready to pack up. The guest room is a little dusty, and when he leans over the bed, the sheets have a whiff of staleness, so he pulls them off and changes them. He goes into the barn to do the laundry, and also pack his things into the bike, and John doesn’t ever turn and look at him.

Chris is in the guest room, reading that true-crime book, when John’s supplier drives up. He hears the car and puts the book on his lap till he hears it leave, and then he finishes the book. Then gets up and takes a shower. Checks his welts and bruises and scrapes. Makes dinner.

He put on a fresh pair of sweatpants for the day, but after he eats, he strips out of them and then goes back to the kitchen. John’s waiting there with a fresh roll of tape, and when Chris shivers just at seeing it, he smirks but doesn’t say anything.

The tube gets strapped on, and then John tapes Chris’ wrists behind his back, bending him over the table. He puts his plate on Chris’ back and eats one-handed from it while fingering Chris; when he finally pulls Chris off, Chris’ cock leaves a sticky streak as long as Chris’ forearm on the table top.

Chris sucks John off in the kitchen. Looking up at him, John not looking back down for once but pointing his face towards the ceiling, groaning and kneading Chris’ shoulders, his thighs trembling into Chris’ chest like maybe Chris has gotten within spitting distance of the way John’s mouth wrecks him. When John comes, he staggers so much that he has to grab the counter to stay up.

John pulls him up and down the hall, and then pushes him into the bed, John’s bed. He lies there on his belly, breathing into the sheets while the shower runs, and then John comes in. Hikes Chris up roughly by the hips and yanks out the plug, and then fucks him. And if John’s mouth wrecks him, and John’s hands scatter the pieces beyond salvage, then the way John fucks him, it’s like the man means to completely wipe Chris from existence.

Chris passes out during it. And wakes up still on John’s cock, cradled back into the man, his own cock free of the metal tube and gratefully erect within John’s slowly-pumping hand, and he thinks there’s no way he’s going to remember this either. He’s already obliterated, he’s got nothing left, nothing to put up or give the man, and he just doesn’t see how he can.

But John works him, achingly slow, and every time the dark edges close in on his vision, he somehow finds a breath and they pull back and he’s left with shockingly clear sensation. The way the burn of one muscle in his thigh slides as the muscle flexes, the uneven calluses on John’s fingers, the drip of one bead of sweat down the back of Chris’ neck to the tongue-tip John flicks out to catch it. It should be too much, should just blow his mind beyond recovery, but somehow it doesn’t and he feels all of it and each of it and everything just—exists.

When he finally comes, it doesn’t even feel like he’s breaking. It just feels like he’s slid over an edge and then slipped into a deep, warm sea, completely slack because he doesn’t have to hold a particle of himself up.

He’s awake, or he’s not. Maybe both at once. It doesn’t really matter; John’s at his back and he just needs to know that and he’s fine.

* * *

Chris wakes up on John’s cock. His hands are free. He lies there and John pulls out, and it’s a little like what the earth must feel when one of those hundred-year-old trees goes down in a storm, all the roots heaving out at once.

“I’ll get breakfast up,” John says, and leaves.

Eventually, Chris gets himself up. He washes himself. Puts on clothes that feel like alien skin, after a week without. He finds ibuprofen in the medicine cabinet and dry-swallows a couple before going out to eat.

John walks him out to the barn and hands him an extra bottle of water, which he puts away before reaching for his helmet. The other man stands back and Chris drums his fingers against the helmet, then turns around. He sees John’s brows lift and irritation flares up at him and he ends with his hand fisted in the front of John’s shirt. He’s nearly kissing the man, lips wrenched apart to let John have it, and then John reaches around and grabs the back of his neck.

“I’ll miss you too,” John says, right before yanking Chris forward and kissing the knees out from under him.

Chris stumbles and John jerks him up so he runs into the bike instead. It rocks on its kickstand and he swears into John’s mouth, but John grabs the wrist he puts out towards the bike and uses it to wrench him closer, sucking the breath right out of him.

“It’s seven goddamn miles from here,” Chris says, a long couple seconds _after_ John breaks off the kiss.

“Yeah, sure, you’ll be fine,” John says. He lets Chris go, but his hand rises a little and traces across Chris’ hip before dropping away. “Let me know when you get back. I put my number in your phone.”

Chris stares at him. John shrugs, and then Chris jerks himself around, takes the helmet off the bike so roughly he nearly drops it. He jams it on his head and himself on the bike, and gets out of there.

* * *

Seven miles at the pointedly nonexistent speed limit out there flies by, but when Chris gets off the bike in the town’s dusty single street, he’s shaking so badly that when he walks into the gas station, the man tells him no booze, thinking he’s in DTs. Chris disabuses him of that notion and hands the man a twenty to wheel the bike into a nearby shed while Chris uses the phone behind the desk.

Two hours later, a moving van pulls in to pick up Chris and the bike. It takes him all the way back home, where he gets out and then sleeps for about eighteen straight hours.

After that, he remembers to text John.

 _Crashed when you got home?_ John replies.

 _It’s a stupid question if you already know the answer,_ Chris types, and then deletes. What he sends instead is: _Yeah._

John doesn’t text again. Not for the next month, which Chris spends shutting down his business and moving assets around, and otherwise getting his affairs in order. Then Chris goes and spends a few days with his daughter and Scott, who both look fresh and young and happy.

“I don’t know,” Scott says, brow furrowing, when he hears. “If you want, I think I can ask—”

“Don’t,” Chris says.

Allison looks at him, and then asks Scott to go check the mail. After he leaves, she comes a little closer and Chris can see her eyes are a little moist, but under that she’s trying. He hates hurting her, but at the same time he’s proud of her for being that strong, being that smart. Knowing better than Scott, who’s kind but who just…never is going to see some things. He’s just not built for it.

“If this is really what you want to do, Dad,” she says quietly.

Chris takes a deep breath. “Yeah,” he says, just as quietly. “I think—it’s time for a change. I did think about it, Allison.”

“Well, you took care of me my whole life,” she says, mustering up a smile. “You should do something for you—just, take care of—”

“I know,” he says. “I will.”

He hugs her, and then kisses the top of her head while she finally gives in and cries on his shoulder. And then he tells her goodbye.

* * *

 _Where are you?_ Chris texts John.

 _Goddamn smart,_ comes the reply. There’s a lag of a couple seconds before the rest, which is an address of a fancy hotel in Sacramento.

Chris flies down. The concierge passes him a key when he gives his name at the reception, and then he goes up and knocks on the door.

The man who opens it is about Allison’s age, with a deceptively lackadaisical slouch, blood under his nails, and a bigger gun than Chris’ usual tucked under one arm. He looks Chris up and down, and then snickers. “Oh, my God, Dad, really?” he says. “I got a whole new set of toys and you back and I gotta thank an _Argent_?”

“You don’t have to thank him, you just need to get out of his face,” comes John’s voice. He’s sitting on the end of one of the two beds, dressed in a black and white suit that does criminal things to the lines of his body, snapping a clip into the bottom of a gun. Then he looks up, as Chris walks in, and the corners of his mouth curl, mostly with amusement. “You’re having more shipped over, right? Because this is worse than what you showed up with before.”

“I figured I’d buy most of it once I got here,” Chris says dryly. He stands and lets John’s eyes go over him again, more slowly; he did go through the trouble of buying a new suit once he’d researched the address.

Stiles makes a rude noise. John doesn’t look over but he takes one hand off his gun and points behind Chris, at the door to an adjoining suite. “I hear Derek every goddamn night,” he says. “And that’s when we’re _working_. Not that I’m planning to be around for it when we’re done.”

“Aww, Dad,” Stiles says, but he obligingly exits the room. Gives Chris a look on the way out, a lot cooler than his father, but Chris can see a lot of likeness otherwise.

John sighs, looking after him, and then rolls a shoulder as he turns to Chris. He looks a little, and then lifts the gun and offers it. “So. Think you remember how to do it?”

Chris reaches for the gun, and then moves his hand to instead grip the hand holding it. He holds onto that, puts his other hand on John’s shoulder, and as the other man leans back, he climbs on to straddle John’s lap. 

“Pretty sure it’s like riding a bike,” he says, as John’s mouth shifts to a full-blown grin.

**Author's Note:**

> All the backstory ended up in the main story, which is being written. This was originally intended as a prequel to that, but after I wrote it out, I think it'll fit better as a very, very extended prologue. So I'm putting it up first.


End file.
